January 3, 2008
Same Shit Different Year
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Well, maybe that’s just negative thinking. I mean, I don’t know what the rest of the year holds. It’s only day three after all. And I am still limping along by the grace of God. There really haven’t been any major catastrophes yet, but the way things have been going I can’t help but think another one is right around the corner. It puts me in this state of constant anxiety that I know must be unhealthy.
Since this is my first post of the year, and I would like to try to start using this as a diary, I will review my life at the moment:
I dropped out of college. I'm about halfway to an associate's degree but I don't have the first clue what I'm working towards, so I need to take some time and figure out exactly what I want from this education so I can decide on a major. Besides, my husband is also in college for Biomedical Engineering, and it's just too hard to keep up with housework and sleep with taking care of the kids and both of us working full time and both taking classes. One of us needs to focus on household stuff.
Last year, my husband was diagnosed with pericarditis when he had a heart attack. He’s had two more minor “cardiac events” since. Of course, I have no sympathy for him. He did this to himself and he knew what coke does to your heart when he started doing it, I don’t care how young he was. And he’s still not serious about quitting smoking. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that he will die young.
My husband and I moved our family into our first real house in October 2007. It was a risky move, one that would only work if everything went perfectly, but we considered it worth the risk. We were living in a tiny apartment with two bedrooms, which meant that we were sleeping in the living room so the kids could have bedrooms. There were people breaking into our car on a regular basis. There were drug dealers living next door, which is a serious issue for us because my husband is working towards recovery from a cocaine addiction. Our credit is a wreck from many immature and stupid mistakes from before we met each other and even more recently. We are working on financial responsibility but it seems like it’s a lot harder for us than for most others.
So when my husband’s boss offered him a lease purchase deal on the house he is moving out of, we jumped on it because we know that we would never be able to get traditional financing or save enough for a down payment on our own. It’s safer than those rent-to-own scams where they throw you out for no reason just before you get to where you would own the place because there is a clear contract involved and this man is a respected business owner and an associate of my husband’s for over 8 years. The payments are $1,100 per month (approximately what we would pay on a traditional mortgage) for 5 years in lieu of a down payment, after which we will be able to go to a lender with a real down payment and possibly be approved for a mortgage with a decent rate. It also gives us some time to work on our credit. It’s a gorgeous farmhouse about 45 minutes outside of town, far enough to be the country but not so far that we are isolated. It’s almost 100 years old, and most of the downstairs (excluding the kitchen and bathroom) looks it, which I love. Upstairs was completely gutted and remodeled five years ago and looks ultra-modern, which I also love. The duality of the house is in harmony with my personality. It’s on four acres and has a huge barn, which my husband is really happy about. It has 3 bedrooms, so the girls still have to share their bedroom, but that’s not such a big deal because their bedroom is about the same size as our entire apartment was. And we get our very own bedroom, and we’re right next door to the baby so he can wake us up if he’s up in the night without waking up the girls. Living here is like living in a dream.
Unfortunately, everything didn’t go perfectly. Everything went horribly, horribly wrong. We were able to come up with the first month’s rent and deposit, but we had to take a cash advance to do it, and we had absolutely no money after that. Then my car’s brake lines started leaking, so I had no brake pressure. Since we were just barely getting enough gas to get to work and back already, we didn’t have any money to get the parts to fix it. Then I got paid, pulled cash out of the bank so I could pay back the cash advance and get the brakes fixed, and the same day all of the cash was stolen out of my purse. So again, we had no money. I missed a week of work because the brakes got to the point where I couldn’t stop at all and I was out of gas anyway, so my next paycheck was only $300. My husband stopped getting paychecks because we couldn’t pay the rent for December, so he asked the landlord to just keep his paychecks until it was paid up. If he got all the hours he usually does, that would only be two weeks. But then they had a bunch of rain days plus the holiday plus they have been working short days, so he didn’t get a single paycheck for the month of December, we still owe rent for last month, and guess what? Rent’s due again! We got the brakes fixed on my tiny little paycheck, but after gas and a little food (supplemented by our local food pantry) we still didn’t have enough to pay back the cash advance or pay the truck payment or any of our other bills.
As soon as we got the brakes fixed, the engine started misfiring and the battery died. So now every time I start my car it needs to be jumped, the battery won’t hold a charge, and my car is shaking and eating gas like crazy. A tank of gas barely lasts two days, and of course I don’t have any money to get any more gas until I get paid again, so every day I have to figure out how I’m going to come up with $20 so I can get to work and home again. Then our water got turned off. Then our fuel oil tank ran empty, so our heat was off. Then we all got pneumonia and needed prescriptions, and the insurance I’m paying $200/month for is no damn help at all because of the deductible and the co-pay so of course we couldn’t afford the medicine. Now my bank account and my husband’s are both hundreds of dollars in the negative because we had to commit check fraud just to get basic necessities. Thank God for public assistance programs, because otherwise the water and heat would still be off. I get paid tomorrow, but my paychecks are only $600, and $600 tomorrow is no help at all today when I know I’m here at work with no gas at all and no way to get myself and the kids home. I’ve already borrowed gas money off everyone I know. I know this paycheck won’t last more than 2 days after I make the bare minimum payments on everything and pay everyone back and get yet another $60 tank of gas. Hopefully it will stretch far enough for me to get a battery and a tune up so my car doesn’t end up completely dead.
We didn’t even have enough money to buy coal so the kids would think Santa didn’t bring them Christmas because they were bad. Thank God for grandparents. We told them that Santa was going to Grandma’s house this year because he knew we were spending the night there.
I’m depressed, more so than I ever have been, even the times when I could do nothing but lay in bed unless it was absolutely necessary that I get up. This is different. I do have hope, a fierce, desperate sort of hope that isn’t really based on reality, so I get up and go to work and figure out how to get home and put on a smile and play with the kids and make dinner and pretend everything’s ok so they don’t know just how bad it is. I also have bitterness, where every time I see or hear about someone buying something beyond gas or food or see someone happy with their life, I sneer inside and silently rail against their stupidity and wastefulness. And maybe worst of all, a nagging thought, every day, that I should have killed myself when I had the chance, before I had people depending on me to keep it together. To think that I justified not doing it by thinking of how much it would hurt my parents seems ridiculous to me now that I realize just how much I hate my parents, always did, for the people that they are. If I knew then what I know now, I would have done it. I look into the future and see day after day after year after year of the same hopeless scrambling to keep things together, and I’m just so tired. I can’t wait for the day when I can just stop.
Ironically, since food has been scarce, I have gained weight instead of losing it. It seems that I eat more fatty food and eat more in a sitting when I eat at someone else’s house or someone buys me lunch or there are treats at work. It must be a survival mechanism, since I often don’t know when I will eat next. I try not to eat at home as much as possible so I can make sure the kids have enough, and my husband too since his job is very physically demanding.
Everything that possibly could go wrong did. Everything. So now living in this house is more like a nightmare than a dream. I can’t help but think God is punishing me for rejecting the path that He laid out for me. I know we weren’t living right for pretty much all of 2007. I was regularly dwelling on the tenets of the old religion, inviting the old lustful homosexual thoughts, indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, ignoring my responsibilities of seeking instruction and community by participating in the church. And that’s just my indiscretions, never mind my husband! In short, we were embracing our sinful nature and turning our backs on God. Is it any wonder that God would remind both of us of our commitment by making us desperately dependent on Him to get through every single day, just like an infant with his mother?
So I’m drawing close to God because there is nothing else I can do. I get the point. I even called my father and reconciled with him, even though the restraining order from when he got drunk and threatened to kill our whole family isn’t up until next May. I need to stop running away from my problems and face them and deal with them like an adult, and I know God isn’t cool with division in families.
I guess this means that 2008 will be a time of rebuilding. I am scrambling to right all the wrongs of the past year, even though I am still reeling from the blows of the past couple of months. God has been so good to get us through each day, and every time I can get my car to start, every time I get to work and home safely, every day that the kids are healthy, every time someone is generous enough to help us is a time to be grateful and praise His name. I just want to have the resources to be able to take care of my family, give back to the community, and still have peace of mind. This is my prayer without ceasing.
Since this is my first post of the year, and I would like to try to start using this as a diary, I will review my life at the moment:
I dropped out of college. I'm about halfway to an associate's degree but I don't have the first clue what I'm working towards, so I need to take some time and figure out exactly what I want from this education so I can decide on a major. Besides, my husband is also in college for Biomedical Engineering, and it's just too hard to keep up with housework and sleep with taking care of the kids and both of us working full time and both taking classes. One of us needs to focus on household stuff.
Last year, my husband was diagnosed with pericarditis when he had a heart attack. He’s had two more minor “cardiac events” since. Of course, I have no sympathy for him. He did this to himself and he knew what coke does to your heart when he started doing it, I don’t care how young he was. And he’s still not serious about quitting smoking. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that he will die young.
My husband and I moved our family into our first real house in October 2007. It was a risky move, one that would only work if everything went perfectly, but we considered it worth the risk. We were living in a tiny apartment with two bedrooms, which meant that we were sleeping in the living room so the kids could have bedrooms. There were people breaking into our car on a regular basis. There were drug dealers living next door, which is a serious issue for us because my husband is working towards recovery from a cocaine addiction. Our credit is a wreck from many immature and stupid mistakes from before we met each other and even more recently. We are working on financial responsibility but it seems like it’s a lot harder for us than for most others.
So when my husband’s boss offered him a lease purchase deal on the house he is moving out of, we jumped on it because we know that we would never be able to get traditional financing or save enough for a down payment on our own. It’s safer than those rent-to-own scams where they throw you out for no reason just before you get to where you would own the place because there is a clear contract involved and this man is a respected business owner and an associate of my husband’s for over 8 years. The payments are $1,100 per month (approximately what we would pay on a traditional mortgage) for 5 years in lieu of a down payment, after which we will be able to go to a lender with a real down payment and possibly be approved for a mortgage with a decent rate. It also gives us some time to work on our credit. It’s a gorgeous farmhouse about 45 minutes outside of town, far enough to be the country but not so far that we are isolated. It’s almost 100 years old, and most of the downstairs (excluding the kitchen and bathroom) looks it, which I love. Upstairs was completely gutted and remodeled five years ago and looks ultra-modern, which I also love. The duality of the house is in harmony with my personality. It’s on four acres and has a huge barn, which my husband is really happy about. It has 3 bedrooms, so the girls still have to share their bedroom, but that’s not such a big deal because their bedroom is about the same size as our entire apartment was. And we get our very own bedroom, and we’re right next door to the baby so he can wake us up if he’s up in the night without waking up the girls. Living here is like living in a dream.
Unfortunately, everything didn’t go perfectly. Everything went horribly, horribly wrong. We were able to come up with the first month’s rent and deposit, but we had to take a cash advance to do it, and we had absolutely no money after that. Then my car’s brake lines started leaking, so I had no brake pressure. Since we were just barely getting enough gas to get to work and back already, we didn’t have any money to get the parts to fix it. Then I got paid, pulled cash out of the bank so I could pay back the cash advance and get the brakes fixed, and the same day all of the cash was stolen out of my purse. So again, we had no money. I missed a week of work because the brakes got to the point where I couldn’t stop at all and I was out of gas anyway, so my next paycheck was only $300. My husband stopped getting paychecks because we couldn’t pay the rent for December, so he asked the landlord to just keep his paychecks until it was paid up. If he got all the hours he usually does, that would only be two weeks. But then they had a bunch of rain days plus the holiday plus they have been working short days, so he didn’t get a single paycheck for the month of December, we still owe rent for last month, and guess what? Rent’s due again! We got the brakes fixed on my tiny little paycheck, but after gas and a little food (supplemented by our local food pantry) we still didn’t have enough to pay back the cash advance or pay the truck payment or any of our other bills.
As soon as we got the brakes fixed, the engine started misfiring and the battery died. So now every time I start my car it needs to be jumped, the battery won’t hold a charge, and my car is shaking and eating gas like crazy. A tank of gas barely lasts two days, and of course I don’t have any money to get any more gas until I get paid again, so every day I have to figure out how I’m going to come up with $20 so I can get to work and home again. Then our water got turned off. Then our fuel oil tank ran empty, so our heat was off. Then we all got pneumonia and needed prescriptions, and the insurance I’m paying $200/month for is no damn help at all because of the deductible and the co-pay so of course we couldn’t afford the medicine. Now my bank account and my husband’s are both hundreds of dollars in the negative because we had to commit check fraud just to get basic necessities. Thank God for public assistance programs, because otherwise the water and heat would still be off. I get paid tomorrow, but my paychecks are only $600, and $600 tomorrow is no help at all today when I know I’m here at work with no gas at all and no way to get myself and the kids home. I’ve already borrowed gas money off everyone I know. I know this paycheck won’t last more than 2 days after I make the bare minimum payments on everything and pay everyone back and get yet another $60 tank of gas. Hopefully it will stretch far enough for me to get a battery and a tune up so my car doesn’t end up completely dead.
We didn’t even have enough money to buy coal so the kids would think Santa didn’t bring them Christmas because they were bad. Thank God for grandparents. We told them that Santa was going to Grandma’s house this year because he knew we were spending the night there.
I’m depressed, more so than I ever have been, even the times when I could do nothing but lay in bed unless it was absolutely necessary that I get up. This is different. I do have hope, a fierce, desperate sort of hope that isn’t really based on reality, so I get up and go to work and figure out how to get home and put on a smile and play with the kids and make dinner and pretend everything’s ok so they don’t know just how bad it is. I also have bitterness, where every time I see or hear about someone buying something beyond gas or food or see someone happy with their life, I sneer inside and silently rail against their stupidity and wastefulness. And maybe worst of all, a nagging thought, every day, that I should have killed myself when I had the chance, before I had people depending on me to keep it together. To think that I justified not doing it by thinking of how much it would hurt my parents seems ridiculous to me now that I realize just how much I hate my parents, always did, for the people that they are. If I knew then what I know now, I would have done it. I look into the future and see day after day after year after year of the same hopeless scrambling to keep things together, and I’m just so tired. I can’t wait for the day when I can just stop.
Ironically, since food has been scarce, I have gained weight instead of losing it. It seems that I eat more fatty food and eat more in a sitting when I eat at someone else’s house or someone buys me lunch or there are treats at work. It must be a survival mechanism, since I often don’t know when I will eat next. I try not to eat at home as much as possible so I can make sure the kids have enough, and my husband too since his job is very physically demanding.
Everything that possibly could go wrong did. Everything. So now living in this house is more like a nightmare than a dream. I can’t help but think God is punishing me for rejecting the path that He laid out for me. I know we weren’t living right for pretty much all of 2007. I was regularly dwelling on the tenets of the old religion, inviting the old lustful homosexual thoughts, indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, ignoring my responsibilities of seeking instruction and community by participating in the church. And that’s just my indiscretions, never mind my husband! In short, we were embracing our sinful nature and turning our backs on God. Is it any wonder that God would remind both of us of our commitment by making us desperately dependent on Him to get through every single day, just like an infant with his mother?
So I’m drawing close to God because there is nothing else I can do. I get the point. I even called my father and reconciled with him, even though the restraining order from when he got drunk and threatened to kill our whole family isn’t up until next May. I need to stop running away from my problems and face them and deal with them like an adult, and I know God isn’t cool with division in families.
I guess this means that 2008 will be a time of rebuilding. I am scrambling to right all the wrongs of the past year, even though I am still reeling from the blows of the past couple of months. God has been so good to get us through each day, and every time I can get my car to start, every time I get to work and home safely, every day that the kids are healthy, every time someone is generous enough to help us is a time to be grateful and praise His name. I just want to have the resources to be able to take care of my family, give back to the community, and still have peace of mind. This is my prayer without ceasing.