Everyday the cupboards grow more and more bare. Most households are stocked fairly full of food that will never be eaten. "Someday we'll be in the mood for that odd flavor of Hamburger Helper. There's nothing wrong with it ... we just have eight boxes of flavors that are better, so we'll eat those first." So they sit, in the back with a jar of pickle relish and peach flavored salsa. Someday when you move or remodel you'll laugh at them being four years out of date, before pitching them. Every shelf in our house has been purged of expired food.
There wasn't a good feeling having purged useless clutter. Only despair that there's one less meal to eat. One more meal we're going to have to concoct from someone else's left overs.
You know what my first thought was when I heard about the earth quake in Haiti was? "Damn, now everyone's going to send their food donations there and I'll have crap to eat." What the hell's wrong with me?
I was trying to watch the news about Haiti and my daughter was screaming and laughing and being loud in general. I couldn't seem to get her to play quietly. So I pulled her into my lap and started to explain to her, in terms that a three year old might be able to grasp, what happened and why I wanted to here about it. I told her that there had been an accident and a lot of buildings had fallen down and a lot of people were sick or hurt. My daughter gasped "Oh No!" I thought maybe I'd given her a bit more than her little mind could handle so I also explained she didn't need to worry because that kind of thing wouldn't happen here and that there were a lot of people that were going to try to make them better. My daughter then looked me in the eye and said "Can we send them soup to make them better?" I told her we could and cried. The wonderful naivety of her solution got to me. That and the fact I was lying to her. I knew we couldn't afford to spare something as valuable as soup.
I thought things on the job boards would pick up after the holidays, but they really haven't. I almost had a job. The guy was starting a business on the side, and wanted me to work part time, and then tack on some freelance on top of that, to get the side business started. I explained to him that due to the constant juggling act of income, I couldn't do that, it would increase my income enough to get my kids Medicaid, but not increase it enough to allow me to afford something to replace it. (Anyone think healthcare isn't broken?) Not wanting to completely talk myself out of a job, I also suggested to him, that given my freelance rates, I'd actually be cheaper for him to hire me full time, than to go with his original proposal. He thought about it, and told me he'd crunch some numbers and get back to me by the end of the day. The end of the day passes and I wait the weekend to hear back. Monday morning I get an email from him informing me his full time job laid him off. So now everything he wanted me to do for him, is now his full time job.
I'm so tired of looking for a job. I've sent out over 350 resumes, to job postings. That's not even counting all the unsolicited letters, "give my buddy a call," and other random resumes I've sent out. My wife suggested we take a vacation with our tax return. It's not financially responsible, but I needed a vacation (from work) fourteen months ago and couldn't get one. Then I got "let go" and threw myself into finding a job. Hitting the job boards is tedious. Scanning line by line of fifty-two job boards every day trying to find something I'm qualified for, that's local, and pays me more than unemployment does. I know my wife needs a break from her job too. At least now she has regular hours, even if it is nearly fifty hours over six days a week, barely above minimum wage, with no overtime or benefits. It's not the "right" thing to do financially, but it might be the right thing to do to keep our family from imploding.
We're struggling, to say the least. I never know if we're doing any better or worse cause we barely get to see each other. The only sign I've seen in any direction is that she wants to plan *something* with me in the future. Even if it is something we shouldn't be spending our money on.
I'm so alone anymore. I try to talk to her, I just don't know how to anymore. It seems like everything that comes out of her mouth is negative. For Christmas, I spend some money to have printed, as a surprise, a calender with pictures of the kids on it. We've done this for family every year since our daughter was born and this year it just wasn't going to be possible. Not an expensive gift but one with a lot of sentimental value. Thanks to some generous friends I made the calender in secret and gave her one for Christmas. I thought I was going to be the hero. I thought of all the things to spend money on at Christmas this would be the one that was okay. She opens it and instead of being happy she's upset that she didn't get to help pick out the pictures this year.
It seems like it's that way with everything anymore. I make dinner and somethings wrong with it. I clean the house and I'm cleaning the wrong area first. She's always been a pessimist, but the unemployment's just made it worse. Maybe because I could escape it for nine hours a day by going to work before. Maybe because the stink of failure is too much for her to bare anymore.
I know I'm losing it. I might be like really depressed. I can't tell anymore. I'm sleep deprived. I sleep on the couch for two hours a night, if I'm lucky. Most nights I have trouble falling asleep. I can't go to bed, I'll wake up my wife. So until she gets up for her shift at 2:30am I try to sleep on the couch. I'm 5'11" the couch is 5'9" from end to end. If my shoulders are 3" across then the couch is 2'8" deep. I sleep on my right side, facing the back of the couch, one arm awkwardly under the pillow, then up between the pillow and armrest with my hand jutting in the air like a 1st grader wanting to be the first to answer the teacher's question. My left hand clutches a throw pillow to my chest. My left foot curls around the top of the other armrest, and my right dangles, awkwardly off the edge. I tried going to sleep earlier but in that awkward position, sleeping more just makes me more exhausted.
When my wife goes to work I move to the bed room. At 4:30 or so my nine month old son, sleeping at the other side of the room wakes for his bottle. At 6:30 he wakes up screaming and the only way to calm him down is to hold him and let him sleep with me. I can't fall into a restful sleep while holding a baby, so until he wakes up I again, usually at 8am I am half asleep. I sometimes go days without sleeping more than two consecutive hours. I rarely sleep deeply enough to have dreams, and when I do they're nightmares. Ironically not of losing the house or having the family pulled apart. My nightmares are of going back to work for the same people I was working for before. The rules of unemployment say that you can't turn down a job. And in my dreams they offer me the job, back and I have no choice but to take it back, and I'm bitter, disloyal and angry. Then I wake up relieved I don't have a job. I'm fairly certain most mornings if I didn't have two kids who were totally dependent on me I wouldn't even make it out of bed. Is it sleep deprivation or depression? Does it matter?
I know I'm losing it. I'm making breakfast for myself and the kids and I did something my daughter didn't approve of, like give her juice instead of milk, so she yelled at me. I just starting crying, I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried. A few days later I'm changing my son in the living room and he's squirming, which is frustrating me. I finish up and toss his diaper into the kitchen trash, but I miss and it falls on the ground. So I go pick it up and toss it again and it falls out. That's what sets me off this time. I sit on the kitchen floor and cry for a minute. Then I give up and go to the bed room. My wife was home so I could. After a few minutes she comes back and starts talking to me trying to figure out what's wrong. I'm too exhausted I'm not sure I was doing more than whining semi-coherent sentence fragments. She's trying to solve the problem, but for some reason, this involves discussing how I could get more sleep, not actually letting me get sleep. If I knew how to get more sleep, I'd be doing it; if you have a solution tell me when I can make coherent thoughts. Finally she leaves me alone and I sleep for six hours. Today, I'm cooking dinner, and I'm making Hamburger Helper and I just start crying. No reason why.
Am I depressed or is this an entirely appropriate reaction to a life that in general sucks in seventeen different ways? Maybe I'm just habitually sleep deprived. I don't know anymore. I want to scream for help, but there's no one to hear me except for my wife who seems to only be able to say the complete wrong thing anymore. I just want her to be there for me. I just want her to tell me it will be alright. I want her to believe in me again. I want to believe in myself again. I want to not struggle to remember the good memories and what I'm trying to get back to. I was happy once, wasn't I? It's been so long. I keep going for the kids. Even if all I can get going is to the kitchen to feed them and to the TV to turn on PBSKids for them. I don't manage to accomplish much else these days. At least until late at night when I'm fighting both boredom and insomnia. I feel such a sense of accomplishment by winning several races in Mario Kart Wii. My daily self esteem is built on my success in a video game the night before. That's it. That's all I've got.
This is my life now.
