Bio - 46 in My Bio

Written in 2011

Much of 2011 was not a good year, and I am determined to make 2012 better.

Tom got laid off again in early March. Once again, we were thrust into the endless cycle of poverty with no apparent way out, like being stuck on an endless merry-go-round.

Shortly after the layoff, I dreamed he wouldn’t return to work until September. It turned out to be another premonition, as I feared. We were on edge for a couple of weeks before he got hired on as a temp at $13 an hour in a warehouse. I began to feel that the hardship we endured at the motel years ago was meant to prepare me for more challenges. The day we were told our unemployment benefits had ended before he found another job was almost more than I could handle. I honestly don’t know if I would have survived it without what we went through in 2007.

Despite the fears and anxieties that kept me up at night, I became angry that anything that might be up there would allow us to endure so much despite trying to live good lives. It was one thing to not have much extra money; it was another to wonder if we could afford food and rent.

I was also furious with our government for its willingness to send billions of tax dollars overseas while refusing to take care of its own citizens. Doctors were dispatched to aid earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan, Haiti, and elsewhere, but we remained uninsured.

Believing our choices were to slowly starve off on the streets or die more comfortably at home, we even planned to seal ourselves in the bedroom and light charcoal to end things with carbon monoxide poisoning. After half a year of job-hunting, we didn’t believe a miracle was coming.

But it was. Unemployment cut us off on September 16th, and less than two weeks later, Tom was working again. This job seems the most promising yet.

Tom describes the work as physical and some of his coworkers as incompetent, which makes things challenging, but he says it’s not the worst job he’s had. At Christmastime, they had a raffle, and he won a Kindle Fire. I’ve been hooked on it ever since, vowing never to read a physical book again. I love how it doesn’t take up space or collect dust, and how it remembers where I left off.

Another highlight of 2011 was getting books published through Amazon and Smashwords. It was exciting at first, but due to not making a lot of money that way, I decided it was pointless to turn a fun hobby into a job and just write for myself. I still share at times on my blog, though. Plus, there was the risk of pirating.

I’m still in touch with my parents and Tammy, though not her kids or my brother, and I don’t want to be. Tolerating Tammy is hard enough. I do it for my parents’ sake and for whatever inheritance they may want to leave us, but I don’t expect much. I’ve been teased enough with the promise of money to not get my hopes up.

My extended family has mostly shunned me, but I don’t care about them any more than they care about me. There are a lot of bad memories there. Still, I have to admit that without them, I don’t know how we would have made it through some tough times.

Tom’s family doesn’t reach out to us, not even with a simple “hello” from time to time. I hope his mother’s final days are miserable, and I don’t feel the least bit guilty for saying so.

I’m still friends with Andy, Adonis, Maliheh, Alison, Kim, Christine, and Mitch, though Maliheh has been distant, blaming it on illness and busyness. Christine is a blogging friend from Ohio, and Adonis is a nice guy in the Netherlands. Irene and Christiane are friends of Nane that I communicate with that times. Christiane lives in Leipzig and Irene lives in Austria. She met Nane when they both lived in New York. Nane worked on Wall Street and Irene was an au pair.

After 15 months, Nane decided to end things. Andy, Alison, and I think she was toying with my feelings unfairly. When things got rough last fall, she initially seemed supportive. But after two months of silence, she told me she thought I was using her for attention, which hurt and angered me.

On top of that, Kim, Aly, myself, and others are still stalked and harassed by Molly. Last summer, her mother even joined in, making all kinds of bogus legal threats.