With A Little Help From My Friends
Day by day I feel myself strengthening now, the decisions made for the next path I have chosen to take in my life. It is amazing how empowering making decisions to take back full control of your life can be. Releasing myself bit by bit from the self imposed bondage I had put myself under after my friend died.
It is amazing to look back upon choices made based on the primal need and instinct to survive when emotionally and mentally you are in the depths of despair and wanting the pain & humiliation to just be over. There is deep inside another piece of the heart, mind and soul that holds on and fights, that takes over and makes you grasp at a lifeline when you see it.
March 5, 2006 I lost a very incredibly special man who has forever changed my life because of the beautiful and loving relationship that we shared. He was the most amazing person I have ever known in my life. Who lived such an inspiring life because of Muscular Dystrophy, the challenges he faced, the constant pain he lived in and his views on the world. Who died far to young but left his impression on and touched every person who knew him deeply. Who had such inner peace, strength and happiness to just be alive, regardless of his hardships in life and offered all unconditional love, regardless of their failings.
March 2007 and I met the guy I’ve been sharing my house with for almost the last 3 years. He said he was looking for change in his life. He wanted to do things and have someone to do things with. I too was looking for a change and knew that I couldn’t do what was going to be happening in my life next alone. I was just about to lose my car, my home and almost all of my possessions and my business was almost in total ruins and I wouldn’t have the money to survive on my own. He knew what was happening and he thought that we could help each other out. We met, he drove up from another state to meet me and continued to come back a few times. We decided we could make it work and he moved in by the end of March. I grasped the lifeline that he offered to me and held on tight.
Over the course of the next year we slowly watched my former life crumble away into nothingness. I bought a mobile home for $5000 cash and we moved in just in time for my daughter to start the school year in a new school district. My former house was 2600 sq ft, my new home 780 sq ft – needless to say I had a lot of things that had to go away forever.
If you have never been in a situation like this, you will never understand what it is like having to let go of memories and keepsakes of the different stages/roads of your life. By this time I had already lost my 2004 Honda Pilot (the only car I have ever bought for myself) – they came and repo’d it in March 2007. So now here I am driving my old 1992 car that I always hated for various reasons, the car that I had promised to my oldest daughter but then had to tell her I couldn’t let her have it because I had no way to get around if she did. My business even more rapidly declining because I just could not maintain focus to work on it and do what I needed to do to keep it alive.
My youngest daughter, it felt like she hated me now. She didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to have to do this, I had made a promise to her that I failed to keep. I had promised when we bought the house, that we would absolutely NEVER move again. My oldest daughter got out as fast as she could, moved in with her fiance because she couldn’t stand the atmosphere in the house any longer. I understood, I hated it, but knew exactly how she felt and why she was making the choices that she was.
Broken Promises – they kept adding up, but not only did I break the promises I made to the 2 people I love most, the 2 people that are my only flesh and blood in this world, my reasons and seasons for being, I broke promises I had made to myself. I was a complete and utter failure but I was fighting to do the best I could at the time to get us through this whole chapter. I just didn’t have a whole lot left inside of me left to fight with. I still couldn’t focus on my business, it was hard to spend so many hours building a site when i had no guarantees that I would see enough of a return to make a difference. My self esteem had been shattered.
Blow after blow continued until May 2008, each blow bringing me down further and further. Financially was getting harder and harder to survive. The oil bill to heat this place was killing us.
Almost exactly 2 years ago i was in such deep utter agony that the most appealing option to me was death. I had finally lost everything I had ever worked for. But I still had my daughters to fight for.
The water heater died in January 2008, we had no money to fix it. I had to call my dad who then paid for a new one to be installed. During this time I had been furiously filling out job applications to anywhere and everywhere. I didn’t care what kind of work, I needed a job. His disability check was not enough to pay the bills and feed us too. We also found out that the bank had finally taken my home. You see I just walked away and left it all. I never tried to sell it, I never tried to save it. I no longer had the desire to live there or have any part of the place. It was where my friend died, i couldn’t stay there, I was haunted there but it didn’t make it any less painful when it finally happened as it was the final item left to lose, the symbols of my success. I had left many things behind in the house. All the stuff that didn’t sell in the garage sales we had and in some cases things I didn’t want to give up but I had no room for and couldn’t afford a storage unit somewhere. Many memories were left behind in the items that remained.
My car died in February 2008, again no money to fix it. My dad comes to our rescue yet again and pays that bill too. Dad also started slipping me money regularly by this time, telling me to give x amount to my daughter and the rest was for me. By this time we were also groveling at welfare. My roommate was able to qualify for food stamps, but I on the other hand was given the run around because I was self employed. I had to meet with some special company so they could investigate every inch of my business to see if it was a viable business. Basically this company was going to be able to decide the fate of my business. Being the person that I am, said SCREW THAT – no government agency was going to tell me if affiliate marketing was a viable business to be in. Welfare didn’t care if I was bringing in only 400 a month and not able to feed my child, we had no medical insurance so I couldn’t afford for either of us to get sick or have anything medically done.
By now, I reconnected with an old friend who reminded me of better days, Fun childhood memories instead of all my bad ones. A friend who also understood the hard times I was going through. She was monumental to helping me to pick up the pieces of my life again and move past the despair I was going through. She helped me to believe in myself again, that I could get through this – another lifeline had appeared and I grabbed on tight.
Heading into April we finally saw a reprieve from the financial hits and with his food stamps helping out. We no longer had to buy oil to heat our home and I was able to renew my focus on finding a job. Again the scurry to apply to places in my job hunt only to hear nothing back. People didn’t want to hire someone who owned their own business for 15+ years.
I finally caught a break in May 2008, when I applied for a job at the local convenience store, that also has a pizza and sub shop. Less than 5 minutes after I hit submit on the application I had a phone call asking me to come in for an interview. My Interview was set for 4 hours later. The guy started the interview telling me that no decisions were going to be made til the end of the following week. I said ok, no problem, though inside i was thinking, I need this job so freaking bad, more than they were aware of that is for sure. I was a nervous wreck, interviewing for a job for the first time in many many years. He and I hit it off immediately and before I left the store that day I was hired and at the highest rate of pay that they were authorized to give. Filled out the initial paperwork and scheduled to come the next day to do my computer based training.
Being the optimist that I am, I believed that the job was going to solve all the issues in my life. Reality though, it presented new challenges and obstacles to overcome and with better financial times on the horizon, different issues began to emerge and the issues are what put me where I am today, just on the verge of moving on and forward in my life once again and alone.
The road back to the top is a slow and tedious one at times, but as always With A Little Help From My Friends I can overcome any adversity that comes my way in time. There is still walls between my children and I, it pains me but the walls have cracks now and slowly day by day I believe we will continue chip away at those remaining blocks and become close again as we once were though it will be on a different level of closeness than before as we have changed and matured more during the process. Breaking promises to my kids and myself, broke the bonds of trust between us all.