Once again....

And yet I am still confused as to how the ways of people are. It seems that people lack one of the most important of life's necessities....common sense. It doesn't matter if one is educated or not...in fact it has nothing to do with the intelligence quotient. It has to do with common sense. thinking things through logically. ANd on that note.... Evangelists in the streets giving out those little pamphlets claiming that all they are doing is talking about Jesus. But they are the first ones who are quick to judge someone if someone passes them by and refuses to have those pamphlets shoved in their faces. In the legal sense those women who are in the corners with those pamphlets are discriminating others and their right to free religion. We as American citizens have a right to choose whether or not we want religion in our lives. IN fact there are many states who have adopted this federal right.

Starting all over again

It's been a while since I've last written. Much has happened since then as is usually the case. Last year, February of 2012, I was evicted from my apartment,I resigned from my job, and my daughter had decided to make out in the world alone. It was deeply traumatic for me. It wasn't as if I lived the high life. I had been thinking of leaving my job for a while and had wanted my daughter to go out there into the world and experience life on her own terms. I'd struggled for many, many years to keep my head afloat and to support my daughter. It had been me and her against the world for a long time and something that I became accustomed to. I'd done it for so long that when I lost everything I didn't, and still don't, know what to do with myself. It's taken me over twelve months to come to the realization that now is when I can do anything that I've ever wanted to do. I'm still not accustomed to having a husband but at least I'm not alone in this period of my life. However, I've been pretty tough on him too. I took these loses to heart so much that I had to be medicated to be able to balance out the anger that I felt with the crushing, debilitating depression that would hold me down for much of this year. I honestly felt that I was going to go insane. Now I face yet another challenge....what to do? Do I want a career or just a job that will help pay the bills? How the hell am I going to make it out of this shelter? What do I do? Everyday I have to take care not to go overboard with my thoughts and I have to gauge emotional reactions. I think about a lot of things now that I have that time on my hands. I've even thought about my marriage and if my husband is the man for me. This is a totally different experience unlike any other. I've never felt so alone, lonely, afraid, and very, very angry. Of course, the process to get into the shelter system doesn't help. I resigned from my job because I felt it would have taken too much time to resolve this shelter process and I was right. Dealing with DHS and HRA is like being in a domestic violence relationship. They ask questions they don't care to hear the answer to, they cut off your income like their shutting off the light whenever they feel like it, so you have to keep going back and forth just to get some food on the table. HRA expects you to return to work, even if you've lost every bit of clothing you had. they expect you to work for minimum wage and get out of the shelter system with that. Plus there are hygienic expenses, household expenses, restaurant expenses, etc., because the shelter does not allow residents to cook. My moral values have also experienced some sort of trauma. Doing the right thing is very uncommon when your suddenly thrust into poverty. Lying becomes the norm. My husband has had to beg, borrow and steal just to bring me a meal at the end of the day, or a roll of toilet paper. The shelters themselves are filled mostly with people who are physically disabled (for real), those who fake a disability, drug addicts and pushers, alcoholics, and felons. I have heard many a shelter experience that is not cool at all. When I go to the bathroom, since its a shared bathroom, I take clorox cleanup, or lysol wipes, everytime. The bathrooms are usually dirty, hell, filthy. People take their shits in the bathtub, on the floor, on the toilet lid. I've seen period on the walls and crabs just jumping around stuck to their hair shafts. It's disgusting. It's so bad that I've taken up peeing in a cup in my room and only using the bathroom when I have to bathe or take a shit. It's embarrasing. In the shelter where I live with my husband, the rooms are mostly single occupancy rooms. The shelters here in New York are housed in hotels and some are still operable hotels, like the one I'm staying in. The difference, however, is that the shelter side is not allowed to have cable, air conditioning, hot plates, microwaves, pretty much nothing of comfort. There is heat in the winter, but the summers are a living hell. Your not supposed to cook, but rules are made to be broken, therefore 98% of the people here have hotplates and microwaves. If people come here to help, they do it half-heartedly. We've had a job developer come to the shelter, but he didn't even know how to do a resume and seemed to burn out after the first week of being here. The Relief bus comes once a week, on Thursdays, but they preach a lot and only serve hot soup and drinks. They have been more of a help than anyone I've come across since I've entered the shelter system. Then there is my husband. Young and somewhat impressionable, he's into hanging out in front of the building, come rain, snow, heat wave, etc. He enjoys getting high, which is what most people do here, and is just as depressed about this situation as I am. He insists that he doesn't want me to work, but I cannot live on welfare alone. It's just not me. We get on our nerves a lot. That's why he's always out and I'm always in. He tries to be as patient with me as I am with him, but sometimes the whole situation becomes overwhelming, and I'm still coming out of this deep depression. And now I'm at a cross roads. I don't have the emotional, mental, and social backup that a person in my predicament needs, so finding the motivation to get up everyday and do something is very difficult. I've spent many days inside this prison, while my husband has tried in vain to get me to go outside even for five minutes. Depression is very debilitating. It really is hard starting over especially when you've got to start at zero. It isn't impossible, I know, it's just very hard. I figure that there must be a reason for all of this, that one day I will look back on these times and breathe a sigh of relief because it would be over. But right now, today, at this moment, it's not over. Right now my immediate problem is lack of motivation. I know that there is a pattern I should be following...or maybe a pattern I should be creating from scratch. There is something that I should be doing yet the roads to take are many. How do I create a road of my own? How do I find the motivation to keep going, to get out of bed and do something...anything? This is where I'm at now.

Changes

So, we've just spent all morning waiting for the system to come back online. That's basically three hours of doing something other than look at the computer. Of course, when this occurs, everything in this office is put on hold. The reason why the system crashes, especially at the end of the month, is because everyone, and I mean everyone, is scrambling around like chickens with their head cut off, trying to make the quota in closed cases. Granted, it's been a good while since a crash last occured. Nonetheless, it's annoying not being able to clean off my desk since yesterday afternoon, at around 4:45pm, when the system crashed.

In other news, there is a new type of awareness in my mind. I feel myself changing in more ways than one. The way I think, feel, see things. No, I'm not going insane. In fact, during this very difficult financial time we're going through, I've never felt so sure that things will end up being okay. Even amidst this constant depression that I sometimes feel, I know, in the back of my mind and deep in my gut, that all will be well.
Until then, the present time is a struggle. I struggle to get up on time and come in to work. I struggle with the thoughts in my head and the reality of being in debt. I owe rent, I owe utilities, and there doesn't seem to be a way to get out of that debt. I earn only so much, especially since I am now on a reduced work schedule and the season's changing. I find that my pay doesn't last a week and every two weeks I earn less than five hundred take home. With that I have to support three people. Lately, I've been helping my husband with transportation costs so that he can find work, steady work. I walk to work now since I cannot afford to purchase another monthly metrocard. The one I do purchase goes to my daughter so that she can attend college. I provide the tobacco that my husband and I smoke and other household necessities like toilet paper and bath soap.
Just recently ConEd decided to up the utilities without explanation and have now removed me from the LevelPlan and are asking for more money. I can only pay so much every two weeks. I'm three months overdue on my rent, due to medical reasons, and the only income coming in is mine. I want to scream, and bite, and kick, and bitch about it, but I find myself holding back on those things because of the amount of patience I've convinced myself I should have at this time. I cry sometimes, when there is no one around or when I'm alone and my daughter is sleeping. I'm somewhat frustrated because I can't do anything more than what I am already doing and I don't know what else to do. Because the season is changing, my daughter bought me a pair of sturdy boots for the upcoming weather. On October 29th, Saturday, it snowed. We've barely got into the Fall weather and Winter is already announcing itself. Temperatures are falling, lots of rain and wind....this is no time to be homeless. Yet there is nothing I can do about it. This feeling of helplessness in this particular situation is what is affecting me the most.
I tend to turn against myself when I begin to be affected by the situation around me. I start to think that this is it. I'm really sick of being in this type of situation. Why is it that the harder I try the harder I fail? I just want to live a comfortable and tranquil life. I believe I've earned it. But getting to that point has proved torturous. I feel like I'm fighting my way out of hell just to get to heaven and neither the Devil or God is helping the situation or me. And when I start to think about these two idiots standing there watching my struggles, I get begin to get angry. I begin to think things like, if God exists, then so does the Devil, and if they both exist, what the fuck are they doing standing there? I start to imagine that the Devil is waiting to see if I do myself in somehow, someway, that is ungodly and unethical, and that God is waiting to see if I am able to make it to heaven. I think that those two idiots are just that....fucking idiots!!!
So, I do my best not to think of those two idiots who stand idly by and I focus on the end result. Incredibly, I can see myself in California. I can see my daughter in California. I can see myself and my daughter in California. But I'm having a hard time seeing my husband there with us. He doesn't seem to be taking this seriously and talks more than he does. But I don't complain. Before the idea to move to California came up, I had decided that I was going to go to California, with or without my family. I had not told anyone about my secret plans. But now my daughter wants to go. And my husband claims that he wants to go, too.
So, while I'm planning the trip, and finding out ways to get there, my daughter has begun to take action and get her driver's license. And just yesterday, my husband got another job (making it two). I'm still looking for work, extra work. While we are excited about making this trip, I still worry about what is happening now. At this point, I'm desperate and am about to prepare to be evicted. I haven't gone to court yet (because I haven't received notice yet), but it's on it's way, for sure.
I'm also a little upset because there was a business deal my husband got into that would have promised a good deal of money to cover the rent and then some. But, like everything else he talks about, the conversation died out and he hasn't brought it up again.
This blog is almost semi-sweet. I've been able to seek just a little relief in writing this, yet the feelings are in the surface, threatening to go over the rim, at the point of bubbling over. On occasion I snap and realize that I've just snap and quickly get a hold on myself. It is not an easy task doing all this self-control. But, in writing this, I realize that no one is going to read this, no one is going to care, and that there really is no one available to help me in my time of need. I don't know how I'm supposed to take this.
I don't know if these experiences are supposed to harden my heart and make me swallow my tears or if they're supposed to break me in some way. It has already affected my faith, especially when it comes to those two babbling idiots I mentioned above. Simplistic (and sadistic) voyeurs. They enjoy watching. I cannot bring myself to pray to a god that simply just let's you struggle or a devil that simply doesn't give a fuck. I guess they're both one and the same. What do I know? What does anyone know? The point is it's up to me, it's all up to me.
And at this point all I can do is the best that I can do, without making any promises. To anyone, including myself.

Something new

So today I decided to try something new. I'm no cook and I say that without shame or embarrasment whatsoever.
And because necessity is the mother of all invention, I decided it was high time to make something different.
I decided to make hash browns. Not knowing how, I found a quick
k recipe on allrecipes.com, added some oregano, adobo, and garlic (for a more seasoned taste), and succesfully
made my first batch ever of hash browns. And fed them to my husband along with eggs overeasy. He enjoyed every bit if it.
Maybe next weekend I'll exprimen t with another dish adventure.

OMG!

It's been over a year since I've written here. A lot has happened, as you can very well guess. I'm still here at the job (mainly out of necessity) and I'm still bored. My arthritis is at its worst and getting worse. And, this past April, I got married. Yup, my friends, I got hitched. To a young, European guy no less. A sweetheart of a fellow who looked beyond the American way of looking at women and saw me for the inner beauty that I am. Quite fortunate, eh? I certainly believe so. And while I started out thinking that this may have been too good to be true, I am now thinking, "why the hell not?". I figured that I only have one life to live and now is my chance to start over again. Last year, for my last blog, I wrote that my life as a single parent was almost over. A prophesy in and of itself. Within a year's time, I've changed my mental outlook even in the slightest and have learned that, even with a new life (or a new chapter in this old life), I am still learning about myself.
A good example of this is my ability to share. Since I got married, I found I had issues with trust and sharing. It was hard to trust and it is still hard to share. I've been accustomed to many years of living alone (without a male partner) and I've always had my things, my closet space, my bed sans the snoring of another.
But its a process that we've both have had to get accustomed to. He too was a notoriously single person for a long time and this American culture is all too ridiculous for him.
The beauty of it all, and the beauty of this union, is quite simple. We get along, beautifully. Neither one of us are conscious of our age difference (15 years) and we work wonderfully together.
So, here is to a new chapter in an old life, or a new life altogether. Let's see what new stories can be derived this time around.
Until next time, ciao.

Sigh

Would you believe...another day, another dollar?

A couple of years ago I discovered that I was bored with what I do. You know, my line of work. After all it doesn't offer much of an opportunity for advancement and the work is soooo easy that even my kid could do it. Of course, I ended up with this position due to many factors, a few of which were raising my kid and paying the rent. While those factors still play a major role in my life, I seem to have come to a crossroads here. I really don't know what to do next. Going to school I've already done.

My kid's graduating in a week so my life as a single parent is almost over. I was beginning to wonder if I was going through some sort of mid-life crisis but I can't say that I'm in the middle of my life yet. As far as I'm concerned, 40 is the new 20 and, while my body may get older, my spirit and heart is still young and free.

Still, at a moment like this, I still wonder what my next step needs to be.

Until next time.... : )