How Life Changes

It's amazing.

Truly Amazing.

Life is interesting. One day you think everything as it is will always be. Taking life for granted is a bit of an understatement. I'm referring to Apathetic American Zombieism. You wake up, like you did the day before, and the day before that. You proceed with your morning routine, like you did the day before, and the day before that. Then you continue on with the rest of your day, like the day before, and the day before that.

The differences between our lives are sometimes only subtle, sometimes they pale beyond comparison. But, they are our routines, our lives.

My story isn't that amazing, or extraordinary. I like to imagine (in the extremely brief moments in between the chaos) that my life isn't really that much different than a lot of other folks' lives. I've been around DU for a little while. I was active for a brief time, and over time I have kind of faded into obscurity as a lurker, which I am more comfortable with. I've read a ton of personal stories here. I have been impressed, shocked, moved to tears, and laughed harder than ever reading some of the personal rantings and musings of fellow DUers. With that said, I'm still not sure why I'm posting this here. Maybe it's the anonymity. Maybe it's because DU feels safe, comfortable. Maybe I'm just in the mood for a little catharsis. Maybe I don't feel hesitant to share here because perhaps I'll just blend in with the rest of the nuthouse. I say that with the utmost reverence, I assure you.

I'll start my "Life Story" (if you care to read on) at the age of 30. I was married. I have three kids. I had a job making close to $60,000. Two cars, vacations, two cats, house hunting for the first time, you know, that proverbial American Dream. As with all dreams, once you peel back a layer or two you find that often times the dreams are really just nightmares masquerading as if we're at the ball.

The marriage was emotionally and mentally (and a few times physically) abusive. I'll just leave it at that. It was abuse directed at me, not the children, just to be clear. Having grown up in a family where physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse was as common as the radically changing weather in Cincinnati, I can say this with honesty - the abuse I endured was indeed my own fault. I allowed myself to endure this abuse. I easily recognized what was happening but was frozen, and in some strange sense almost began to believe that somehow this was normal. With a pattern of abuse already present from the time I was a small child I should have acted, I should have stopped it. I should have ended the marriage nearly four or five years earlier. It was no surprise to friends and family that I had stayed as long as I did.

Until one day I didn't.

I left a year and one month ago. I have lived in a little one bedroom apartment during this time. I saw my kids every weekend. I called and talked to them on the phone every night with the exception of three nights (working late, missed them when they had already gone to bed), and paid well over what would be due for child support. I love my children. They were, and continue to be my "salvation". They saved me from me.

As with most stories when it comes to our lives, this was certainly not the end.

Four months ago my ex was in a car wreck. I also lost my job within the same week. She seemed fine at the time but the car was completely totaled. As part of my offer when I left her I continued to pay the car payment and after this accident I gave all the money from the accident to her so she could purchase another car (which she was able to do) in order to keep their lives from being disrupted. I obtained another job, but because of the company's failure to launch the new program I was hired for it was shut down and I was subsequently let go within two months.

I have been on unemployment for the second time this year, for the past month. Three weeks ago the ex called to inform me that the wreck had indeed caused injury to herself as it would so happen. She damaged discs in her spine and it will require surgery. She has no college education, having dropped out of high school after her sophomore year to obtain her GED. I recently completed my first college degree in IT Programming. Even with me on unemployment I clearly stood a better chance of providing for the kids, especially after she lost her job from missing work due to the back injury worsening. With all that said, I still could not be happier about the prospect of the kids returning. My lifeblood. I am reinvigorated, I have regained all the lost steam, and I am at peace once more. They make everything I accomplish possible.

With a little help from a friend, after a month of job searching with absolutely no luck in my own field, I was able to finally be offered a job with a large bank. Unfortunately the position is in sales and pays $24,000 a year. I started today.

So, here I sit, in my one bedroom apartment, waiting the next three weeks to move into a three bedroom apartment, with my three children fast asleep as I pound away at the keyboard, contemplating life's changes.

As stated before, this is also not where the story ends.

The last three weeks have been spent furiously seeking assistance, state, federal, etc. Daycare, welfare, TANF (cash assistance), SNAP, food stamps, anything. I have never had to apply for or use any of these benefits before in my life. Needless to say I was "schooled" on what exactly a person is put through when they fall.

I was able to get my children medicaid, daycare vouchers secured, hearing for everything else this Wednesday, and reeling at the news from earlier today that apparently making $24,000 as a single parent with three children means I make too much to qualify for cash assistance.

I have learned more about the welfare system in three weeks than in reading every single story ever posted on DU on this subject, and that statement in and of itself even to me sounds ridiculously impossible. Regardless, I got a crash course in what it's like to truly live on the brink, and to fight every damned day to keep your fingers dug in and not fall of the edge. But hey, life changes. How it changes, well, that's what the subject of this is.

I know we'll make it. We'll make it because I want us to, and because we must. We will make it through all of this. This will be temporary for as long as it needs to, and hopefully not a single day longer. Another opportunity will knock, and I'll just have to make sure the kids keep it down so I can hear the door when it does. The thing that bothers me through all of this though is that the system is clearly broken, or need of a damned good tune-up. I could go into detail about a great many things with this but this is just my life. I am absolutely certain there are amazingly more absurd and heartbreaking stories to be told than mine.

Still, it just strikes me something curious how life changes.

And that's about it, I guess.
Thanks for listening.