I'll be 47 in a week and it all just hit me like a big rig. Not my age but the loss of the past 16 years and where it has left me, but more importantly my kid as well. This isolation being the nail in the coffin for us both and not being able to change or alter it no matter the opportunities presented due to the inability to get anywhere is like salt in the wounds. The night the car we were contemplating buying took a shit on us, my sons old job was being offered back to him. That was like taking a flat out blow to the gut and the face at one time. So now what? Now. What? ...
When my son was just a baby his father, Dan and I were forced to live with my father. My father is about as sane as my mother. We didn't have any income and my son needed diapers and food so Dan and I sold our blood at the plasma place in Oceanside. You could only do it once every few weeks but it was $15 for each of us to buy diapers, baby food and something for us to consume. before you wonder if my father fed us the answer is no. Period. When we were homeless, just a few years before, we went and stayed with my father momentarily. We had no income at all then either. My father would make us work like horses for a few bucks. I vividly remember one day when we were starving, literally and my father told Dan he would pay him to wash and wax both his cars. It was summer. It was brutal, but he did it. After 3 hours or so my father gave him $5. Five dollars. We went to the AM/PM that was walking distance and bought 2 hot dogs for $2. I guess my point of telling this story is that what I face today is not so much a new place I find myself but one I worked really hard to never have to face again. I have been there and lived that and I knew that I deserved more and was willing to work hard to get it.
I guess the one lesson I didn't learn was to never trust anyone. If you can't trust your own parents and their love for you and their intentions then really, who can you trust. The answer I now know is no one. Karma is a nice thought in theory but I have not seen it. I have stopped believing in it. I know far too many people who have never helped anyone without a self serving motive and they prosper. I don't know anyone personally who can say that they have saved someones life or more than one persons life (outside of in their career) yet I have and I die slowly. I see people abuse others as a way of life get an abundance of good things and people to fill their world and I can't find a single soul without motive to lend a hand to us. I have seen the demand of so much from ones that don't do anything to get it, but still they do. All I have ever wanted was a home, a family, and a small but happy life. No frills, just a strong base and some strong bonds. Connection. And I consciously made all my choices to not end up like either of my parents. I am not like them so much but my life is exactly like theirs. They just had a lot more fun to end up where they have.
I worked hard and did all the right things, or the things that logically were right, which means I made tough choices and struggled to not take the easy way out of everything, and I ended up right here. Right in the same ugly place that they both are. I always thought it was due to the selfishness on their part. The lack of logic. The way they used and abused people, drugs, alcohol, etc that got them here. Man, was I wrong. I thought the fact that each of them had one person in their lives that ALWAYS dug them out of their self-made holes was what kept them so weak and incapable of accepting any responsibility for their lives. Once those people had died they both just kind of laid down and died wherever they were at the time although for one of them that happened much later because the person they looked to left them something to extend the hand for a while, but still in the end they ended up just as the other did. And me as well. For me though, it was trusting and believing and persevering that got me here. Still partially my fault, of course, but my fault was in my belief in others. Not giving up when I should have. Not having enough belief in myself anymore. Not wanting to put my kids through anything I went through when I still believed there was something there to hope for or believe in. And I might add that the other person involved spent a lot of time leading me to believe this as well. I was not just blindly having hope in an obviously lost cause. This was planned. This was consciously mapped out. This was deceit in its rawest form, and I fell for it.
So now what? Now what.
I read and read and read. I try to draw a map to work my way out. I try to grasp at anything tangible to accomplish anything. Anything at all. I haven't come across anyones experience yet that has fully encompassed this place I find myself and my son in though. There is always that one or two things that they had that we don't. The pertinent thing that made all the difference. The miracle or helping hand or resource. I can't find any of it though. Even in my dreams I am right where I am trying to figure out how to wake up from what has to be a nightmare. It just does not seem possible to have so many 'by chance' disasters happen consistently for such a long span of time to such a detriment to us. I mean the odds alone are staggering. If my life was a lottery ticket I'd be one of those once in a lifetime winning tickets.
I have so much potential. So fucking much, especially now that the weight of a relationship with a broken person is lifted, yet I can't even get food for us now. It is all just continuing to go to waste and my life is 2/3 over. How cruel is it to know what you have but not be able to do anything with it? To not be able to supply yourself with the very most basic of life's needs. Food, shelter, income and. maybe some laughter once in awhile.
Is that really so much to hope for?
When my son was just a baby his father, Dan and I were forced to live with my father. My father is about as sane as my mother. We didn't have any income and my son needed diapers and food so Dan and I sold our blood at the plasma place in Oceanside. You could only do it once every few weeks but it was $15 for each of us to buy diapers, baby food and something for us to consume. before you wonder if my father fed us the answer is no. Period. When we were homeless, just a few years before, we went and stayed with my father momentarily. We had no income at all then either. My father would make us work like horses for a few bucks. I vividly remember one day when we were starving, literally and my father told Dan he would pay him to wash and wax both his cars. It was summer. It was brutal, but he did it. After 3 hours or so my father gave him $5. Five dollars. We went to the AM/PM that was walking distance and bought 2 hot dogs for $2. I guess my point of telling this story is that what I face today is not so much a new place I find myself but one I worked really hard to never have to face again. I have been there and lived that and I knew that I deserved more and was willing to work hard to get it.
I guess the one lesson I didn't learn was to never trust anyone. If you can't trust your own parents and their love for you and their intentions then really, who can you trust. The answer I now know is no one. Karma is a nice thought in theory but I have not seen it. I have stopped believing in it. I know far too many people who have never helped anyone without a self serving motive and they prosper. I don't know anyone personally who can say that they have saved someones life or more than one persons life (outside of in their career) yet I have and I die slowly. I see people abuse others as a way of life get an abundance of good things and people to fill their world and I can't find a single soul without motive to lend a hand to us. I have seen the demand of so much from ones that don't do anything to get it, but still they do. All I have ever wanted was a home, a family, and a small but happy life. No frills, just a strong base and some strong bonds. Connection. And I consciously made all my choices to not end up like either of my parents. I am not like them so much but my life is exactly like theirs. They just had a lot more fun to end up where they have.
I worked hard and did all the right things, or the things that logically were right, which means I made tough choices and struggled to not take the easy way out of everything, and I ended up right here. Right in the same ugly place that they both are. I always thought it was due to the selfishness on their part. The lack of logic. The way they used and abused people, drugs, alcohol, etc that got them here. Man, was I wrong. I thought the fact that each of them had one person in their lives that ALWAYS dug them out of their self-made holes was what kept them so weak and incapable of accepting any responsibility for their lives. Once those people had died they both just kind of laid down and died wherever they were at the time although for one of them that happened much later because the person they looked to left them something to extend the hand for a while, but still in the end they ended up just as the other did. And me as well. For me though, it was trusting and believing and persevering that got me here. Still partially my fault, of course, but my fault was in my belief in others. Not giving up when I should have. Not having enough belief in myself anymore. Not wanting to put my kids through anything I went through when I still believed there was something there to hope for or believe in. And I might add that the other person involved spent a lot of time leading me to believe this as well. I was not just blindly having hope in an obviously lost cause. This was planned. This was consciously mapped out. This was deceit in its rawest form, and I fell for it.
So now what? Now what.
I read and read and read. I try to draw a map to work my way out. I try to grasp at anything tangible to accomplish anything. Anything at all. I haven't come across anyones experience yet that has fully encompassed this place I find myself and my son in though. There is always that one or two things that they had that we don't. The pertinent thing that made all the difference. The miracle or helping hand or resource. I can't find any of it though. Even in my dreams I am right where I am trying to figure out how to wake up from what has to be a nightmare. It just does not seem possible to have so many 'by chance' disasters happen consistently for such a long span of time to such a detriment to us. I mean the odds alone are staggering. If my life was a lottery ticket I'd be one of those once in a lifetime winning tickets.
I have so much potential. So fucking much, especially now that the weight of a relationship with a broken person is lifted, yet I can't even get food for us now. It is all just continuing to go to waste and my life is 2/3 over. How cruel is it to know what you have but not be able to do anything with it? To not be able to supply yourself with the very most basic of life's needs. Food, shelter, income and. maybe some laughter once in awhile.
Is that really so much to hope for?
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