That's where I started this whole thing. That's where I find myself again. The venue has changed, but I may be worse off than I was before. Financially anyway. It's a long drawn out process to foreclose on a home, its a quick an easy process to evict a tenant who isn't paying rent. I did score a great deal on my rent though when I moved in, it's half off for the first six months when you sign a year long lease. A paltry $350 a month keeps my apartment. My unemployment check is $160 a week, $80 of which comes out for child support before I even lay eyes on it. I can opt to defer or even lower my payments while on unemployment but I don't because I want to take care of my kids. You don't even have to do the math to figure out I'm in trouble. How do I make ends meet? I don't to be honest. Every month, without asking I get a check from my Grandmother for rent.
The rest of my cash goes to phone, electric, internet and keeping gas in the car to go to interviews. The eight hours driving to get my kids, two hours to get them, another two to bring them back home, then the reverse trip there and back, has suddenly become a gigantic expense. There's a plasma donation center within walking distance. If I sell plasma four times between visits with the kids, the maximum amount legally I can, I can just barely afford the gas. I want to say it's a difficult decision to see my kids on my weekends. It's not, I always do. But it's still stressful, the actual act of making the decision. I can't maintain the car. Over the summer on three separate occasions I get flat tires, because I can't really afford to replace them unless I have to. So I wind up on the side on the road, putting the spare on. I'm late to get my kids once. Twice I'm late dropping them off because they were with me when I had the flat. Their mother seems to think I have some control over the situation and yells at me for it. But I don't. I don't have control over anything in my life.
The months pass. I never know if I'm leaving at the end of the month or not. I never asked my grandmother to pay my rent, never told her not to either. Sometimes the check shows up a week before rent is due. Some days a few days after the first of the month. Sometimes I'm glad to see it. Sometimes, I'm not. I go on interviews, some promising, some not. Time ticks by, slowly. It bends and warps at times. Not as bad as it did in the house when I was totally isolated. But still, sometimes a day feels like a week, sometimes a week feels like a day. Some days I eat five meals a day out of boredom and complete lack of concept of time. Sometimes I think I go days without eating.
I have few friends in this new city, but the handful I do have go out of their way to help. Some weeks the only time I venture from my apartment is to sell plasma twice and trivia night at the bar. If I'm lucky someone buys me a beer. I don't ask though. I'm tired of asking for help. I'm tired of being a mooch. Sure I could go out an make new friends, but I try not to make any connections to people that might make it hard to leave when ... if ... it comes time. I do make new friends though. They just mostly live in my thirteen inch computer monitor. Someone who likes a sarcastic post I make to Facebook might as well be my best friend. New friends are good because they haven't heard me whine about the same damn thing 150 times before: "My life sucks, I have no job, I have no money, I miss my kids." Eventually I grow tired of hearing my self even say it. I'm tired of thinking it.
I sit alone in my apartment. I apply for jobs, I watch Netflix, the one luxury I afford myself, and it's $8 a month. It keeps me sane. It passes the time. I have to be careful what I wtch though. There are people in shows that have jobs, or are in relationships. I go to bed early. I sleep late. I take frequent naps. I eventually become so bored I decided to finish unpacking the apartment, something I didn't have time too do before I got laid off. I know I'll likely be repacking it all soon, but I'm so bored. The loneliness is unbearable at times. It's one thing to hurt emotionally, but it gets so bad it's becoming actual physical pain. It sounds like something people just say, but I lived it. I felt it. I cry often. It's something to do. If I had money, I'd drink the days and worries away. But I don't, I'm broke.
At least it's slightly better than when I was alone in the house. During that last month I attempted some plumbing repairs to the bathtub drain. I was in the crawlspace cutting the PVC pipe with my reciprocating saw (a power tool). I nicked a copper water line at water is spraying everywhere, It occurs to me that water and power tools are a bad combination and if I were to die at that moment, how long would it be until my body was found? No job, no significant other, no social obligations ... if I missed picking up the kids my ex would just leave me a a hundred nasty voice mails, but she'd never bother to express concern until maybe after a month of not seeing them. Maybe the police would come, they'd never find me in the crawl space. At least in my apartment if I died I have neighbors to smell my rotting corpse. I did eventually spring for a plumber to come out.
The calender has little meaning. I have kids every other weekend. Other than that ... nothing. Nothing I have to do, nothing that can't be moved. I try to spread out my twice a week plasma sells as evenly throughout the week as I can just to have something to look forward too. Yeah, looking forward to waiting hours just to be stuck with a needle. It's like my entire life is the second day of a three day weekend. It's too late to start anything you haven't already started, and if you don't already have plans for tomorrow odds are you're not going to be doing anything then either. For five months the only thing that happens to me that really marks the passage of time is I finally get divorce papers in the mail. After more than two years this should be a good thing, but all I can think is "How the hell am I going to afford a lawyer?"
Days tick by, turn into weeks and months. I see the end though. Not in a good way either. My move-in special expires soon, my rent doubles and I can't accept anymore money from my grandmother, not that I even know if it's coming. I give myself an ultimatum, no job by September 21st and I'm leaving. That gives me until the end of the month to pack up, clean up and get the hell out of dodge.
The deadline passes. I pack up everything I just unpacked weeks ago. I sell anything and everything I have of value that I can afford to part with, clothes, DVD's, miscellaneous wedding crap I have no idea why I still own, on eBay just to afford the moving truck. I go to thrift shops, consignment shops and second hand stores to sell even more. I'm leaving the DVD resale shop and I see a homeless woman with a cardboard sign. I pull out some of my newly acquired cash and hand it out the window to her unwashed hands. I don't even count how many or how large the bills are. Call it believing in karma. Call it the golden rule. Call it investing in my future in case it's me holding the cardboard sign in the near future.
I took the biggest gamble of my life moving here. I lost.
The months pass. I never know if I'm leaving at the end of the month or not. I never asked my grandmother to pay my rent, never told her not to either. Sometimes the check shows up a week before rent is due. Some days a few days after the first of the month. Sometimes I'm glad to see it. Sometimes, I'm not. I go on interviews, some promising, some not. Time ticks by, slowly. It bends and warps at times. Not as bad as it did in the house when I was totally isolated. But still, sometimes a day feels like a week, sometimes a week feels like a day. Some days I eat five meals a day out of boredom and complete lack of concept of time. Sometimes I think I go days without eating.
I have few friends in this new city, but the handful I do have go out of their way to help. Some weeks the only time I venture from my apartment is to sell plasma twice and trivia night at the bar. If I'm lucky someone buys me a beer. I don't ask though. I'm tired of asking for help. I'm tired of being a mooch. Sure I could go out an make new friends, but I try not to make any connections to people that might make it hard to leave when ... if ... it comes time. I do make new friends though. They just mostly live in my thirteen inch computer monitor. Someone who likes a sarcastic post I make to Facebook might as well be my best friend. New friends are good because they haven't heard me whine about the same damn thing 150 times before: "My life sucks, I have no job, I have no money, I miss my kids." Eventually I grow tired of hearing my self even say it. I'm tired of thinking it.
I sit alone in my apartment. I apply for jobs, I watch Netflix, the one luxury I afford myself, and it's $8 a month. It keeps me sane. It passes the time. I have to be careful what I wtch though. There are people in shows that have jobs, or are in relationships. I go to bed early. I sleep late. I take frequent naps. I eventually become so bored I decided to finish unpacking the apartment, something I didn't have time too do before I got laid off. I know I'll likely be repacking it all soon, but I'm so bored. The loneliness is unbearable at times. It's one thing to hurt emotionally, but it gets so bad it's becoming actual physical pain. It sounds like something people just say, but I lived it. I felt it. I cry often. It's something to do. If I had money, I'd drink the days and worries away. But I don't, I'm broke.
At least it's slightly better than when I was alone in the house. During that last month I attempted some plumbing repairs to the bathtub drain. I was in the crawlspace cutting the PVC pipe with my reciprocating saw (a power tool). I nicked a copper water line at water is spraying everywhere, It occurs to me that water and power tools are a bad combination and if I were to die at that moment, how long would it be until my body was found? No job, no significant other, no social obligations ... if I missed picking up the kids my ex would just leave me a a hundred nasty voice mails, but she'd never bother to express concern until maybe after a month of not seeing them. Maybe the police would come, they'd never find me in the crawl space. At least in my apartment if I died I have neighbors to smell my rotting corpse. I did eventually spring for a plumber to come out.
The calender has little meaning. I have kids every other weekend. Other than that ... nothing. Nothing I have to do, nothing that can't be moved. I try to spread out my twice a week plasma sells as evenly throughout the week as I can just to have something to look forward too. Yeah, looking forward to waiting hours just to be stuck with a needle. It's like my entire life is the second day of a three day weekend. It's too late to start anything you haven't already started, and if you don't already have plans for tomorrow odds are you're not going to be doing anything then either. For five months the only thing that happens to me that really marks the passage of time is I finally get divorce papers in the mail. After more than two years this should be a good thing, but all I can think is "How the hell am I going to afford a lawyer?"
Days tick by, turn into weeks and months. I see the end though. Not in a good way either. My move-in special expires soon, my rent doubles and I can't accept anymore money from my grandmother, not that I even know if it's coming. I give myself an ultimatum, no job by September 21st and I'm leaving. That gives me until the end of the month to pack up, clean up and get the hell out of dodge.
The deadline passes. I pack up everything I just unpacked weeks ago. I sell anything and everything I have of value that I can afford to part with, clothes, DVD's, miscellaneous wedding crap I have no idea why I still own, on eBay just to afford the moving truck. I go to thrift shops, consignment shops and second hand stores to sell even more. I'm leaving the DVD resale shop and I see a homeless woman with a cardboard sign. I pull out some of my newly acquired cash and hand it out the window to her unwashed hands. I don't even count how many or how large the bills are. Call it believing in karma. Call it the golden rule. Call it investing in my future in case it's me holding the cardboard sign in the near future.
I took the biggest gamble of my life moving here. I lost.
This my life now.
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