Paying for Space

My child wants to grow up and be an influencer. I still dream that I will graduate one day as a Social Worker. There have been so many in my life but not only quantity, quality. I still remember my first social worker. I have a year and a half, and then I will have my credits. I have to repeat a few courses. One day I will be on that stage. I couldn’t afford my tuition. And I have debts for going that are astronomical. When I am able to focus on school, I get straight A’s. People just immediately assume I am stupid anyway. I stopped caring a long time ago.

I still want to have a license that says I am a massage therapist. Some of us have skills in places. You tell someone you would give them a massage without it, and either they think you are a pervert, I am a natural at feet, have been since I was young. I don’t mind doing it for my friends. I’d still like to get paid for it. I’m very good at it and I like to do it. My hands miss it. It was my calling. I lost my transportation to drive to the school just as we were getting ready to start on the floor. I had no way to get there for an entire month. I still want to be a massage therapist. I’ve got skills.

I still want to write things. A book, an article, a screenplay, a pilot, I don’t know things. Things that I would get paid to write about.

My current job is like clockwork. I know how to do the job. I will do it well. Every day I work there I will think about how much I wish it was at my own house that I’ve basically lost because of the employment situations in the last few months. I spoke to the lady today, she thinks it should just be surrendered. What I’ve been able to afford to put towards it is not enough. Where the money would come from to make it liveable so I can get the electricity and plumbing fixed is unknown, so maybe she is right. I told her forever ago that was my only solution, they keep giving time with no changes. It sucks cause it allows me to hope something will turn up. It hasn’t yet but maybe someday.

I quit my job in January. She was going to go to hospice, I was suddenly responsible for doing things I never signed up for, and the person actually in charge was my mother. She got boss and mom confused in the wrong way, on the wrong day, and I quit. She was mad and refused to hire me back. I got hired for a job. I couldn’t get access to the right internet and I didn’t have the money to pay for a new one. I got a job at the gas station. To work at the counter, they immediately started training me for the deli and explaining how I would be responsible for things I was physically able but unwilling to do. The man who hired me talked to me like I was stupid. I just couldn’t work there and I got hired as a supervisor for more money.

I was excited, told I had the ability to travel. It started out fine I went on a trip. I tried to point out some things I noticed were wrong about the way they did things. As a supervisor I thought it was my job, The next thing I know they stopped even training me. That was after the DM met me and informed the manager who hired me that it was ok for me to work there, but not in the position of supervisor. She had a problem with me that I could not change or fix.

Tanya died as I had just started working on the travel team where I would be gone for days at a time. There was no longer any nurses or aides in the house, though my mom is absolutely entitled to one. First trip no problem. Tanya died, two days later my mother fell and could barely walk. I decided not to go states away with no one for them to get ahold of. I could not travel because of needing to care for my children and be in the house. So my hours got dropped so low that I was getting weekly paychecks for forty dollars. I started looking for something else.

I got hired by the government. They took months to get through my background check. I was then hired to work at home for another company. They wanted to wait to start and I needed to make money. I took a temporary job with the state that was supposed to last until September. It would have lasted until I started the job with the government. It ended in July. after 1 1/2 paychecks. Weeks with nothing.

Two days before the call came in to start training with the government, my car was repossessed. I couldn’t do the job I had been hired for without a car.

We are up to August now, and bills that could be paid stayed paid up until May when Tanya died. Three incomes were out of the house. It was so unexpected. The House went into shock and despair, and bills started getting out of control. Her income and the other two incomes existing because she required 24 hour care. She had MS and has been bound to her bed for four and a half years. Steadily declining. The dementia was getting worse. We were not expecting her to go though, so we did everything we could to keep her comfortable. Her family hasn’t seen her in years. They didn’t take care of her, but suddenly they were entitled to make decisions about things they knew nothing about.

This is how storage started being an issue. We have had two of these storage units for no less than 15 years. Tanya had been diagnosed but was still teaching her MS had not gotten bad and she signed her name to the units. They didn’t recognize her relationship with my mother but it didnt matter, they both had access. When Tanya died, we ended up getting behind. Then when they learned Tanya died they said it was going to be up to her parents to decide what happened to everything inside. As time went on we kept waiting to hear anything, and the bill kept getting bigger.

I have a stranger to thank for my family managing whar litle we could. I wont call him out by name because I don’t think he’d want me to. His help allowed my kids to eat. Lights to stay on, hope to continue.

After a month I got hired for another job, I got to work for two days before we realized there was something wrong with my equipment, I had to send it back. It took them weeks to get me into another training class. I went out and got a job waitressing. I was only making 30.00 a day. 3 days a week. Probably 50, I always ended up buying food to bring home. That ended abruptly. I don’t know what happened. It was the politest parting of ways I think I’ve ever encountered. I am still confused. I have my speculations, it just suddenly was over and I was kinda upset but not really. I didn't get the chance to work that weekend I expected which is when my own unit got behind. Everything literally I have owned when I moved from a house to a bedroom. I started my new class and the new old job began the next week. I’m working every day.

My first check comes in five minutes before I have to go to work. My son goes to deposit it after some convincing. I have a looming electric bill that is looming because I could only come up with half of it and it broke the payment arrangement. So here I have a check with only a little more than a week of pay, a looming electric bill, and no groceries what so ever in the house. My eldest son agrees to deposit the check in my bank and rides his bike up to do so.

I check my balance and don't see it reflected. I call, they inform me they are going to hold the check for a week. I broke. I have to now pay 20.00 to get a cab to the bank, leaving work to go get my check so I can try to have it cashed somewhere else. The third paycheck from this company to the bank. They are going to hold it and I have no food for my children. I had to leave work to go and I am not supposed to miss any training. If I don't go I can't even hope to get my paycheck back till Monday, three days away. I broke down in the lobby when they wait till I walk in to take the check into talk to the manager. I have never been more embarrassed cause they made me feel like I was in the wrong. We go to the store to get my check cashed and grab groceries so they can have something to eat. The next day I paid another 30 to go to the grocery store and buy food. There's been very little.

My son has a flat tire on his only way to get to work. I’m short on the electric but not much. The last 15.00 I have will be spent on more food, and my mother needs 15.00 for medicine that I don’t know what to do to get. She has Parkinson's and is two pills away from being out of her Carbidopa which she has to take. She's already sick, and too damned stubborn to go to the Dr.

I need to go to the doctor and more importantly the dentist, I don’t have insurance or the copay, and I never did get the paperwork filled out to try to qualify for assistance. They say I make too much. I can barely see lately but I can’t go and get glasses. The doctor already told me he was worried the last time my tooth abscessed. I can't miss work to go. I don’t have the money, and he's already said he thinks it's bad, I have to have surgery. I will then have to heal. I know how much it’s going to hurt but I wonder what it would be like to smile again without being completely embarrassed. They basically came in bad my bio mom didn’t think much about nutrition when she was pregnant.

Alcohol and drugs were more important. The doctor said I had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome before it became a spectrum disorder. So I’m kinda lower on the spectrum, I’d never even paid attention until recently. My adopted mother didn’t believe I couldn’t be cured. So it was never really acknowledged. I worked through it. I thought I was autistic. Very similar but different.

My back is twisted because of a broken mattress that I can’t replace. I’ll be damned if I get one before my mother and my son do. I bet the girls need one too.

I lose storage and I lose the winter clothes I can’t afford to replace. My mother reminded me today that we wouldn’t have a tree or ornaments. They were set aside for safekeeping. I think about my books, the notebooks of stories and poems I’ve written. I have another part-time job starting in November. I’m not quite sure how it will work but I'm hoping it’s going to help.

Storage wants a substantial amount put on the two units to unlock them so I can empty them, 500 is half of what they say is due. Mine missing two months now is up to 268 dollars because they cut the locks and charged me for doing so. I have to rent a truck because we have no vehicle and there is enough that a truckload or two should have it emptied I desperately need to get a dumpster too, bags to take and donate things. This house has been in a state of depression for almost five years now. There are broken things and trash mingled with things that can help other people. We have to clear out some of the fog just to be able to breathe again.

I have caught my children crying over losing the things they were just supposed to be stored for a minute while we cleaned up the house. They understand but I take the brunt of the blame. This is one of those things from my childhood I never wanted any of them to experience.

In the past six years, we have lost my dad, step-mom, grandfather and both my grandmothers. Everything my mom saved from her parent’s house is in storage, the photographs and memories she has clung to for so many years. The memories of my dad, photo albums and Christmas ornaments, baby blankets and treasures, worthless to everyone else but priceless to us.

I tried to call her today but she had already left. The units have not gone to an auction yet but I have no way to judge how much time is left. Next week seems to be the cutoff and I am no closer, no brilliant idea or plan has surfaced. I just stay torn apart not knowing what to do. Prayers, wishes they seem to be wasted.

I’m writing because if I don’t I feel like I’ll explode. I recently became engrossed in reading people's stories in regards to needing help. Unfortunately, there are as many scammers as people who legitimately have needs. I got involved online with someone helping the needy, it turned into one of the creepier experiences in my life. I think I knew immediately it wasn’t actually going to work, then it turned creepy and immature and more drama than I cared to be witness too.

I started feeling like I was living in a scene from a movie where there are people bleeding and starving in the street begging for the sustenance to continue while the evil hierarchy promises a loaf of bread and only hands you a crumb. This is only when they aren’t trying to kick you away like a disease. I felt more uncomfortable than I ever had at one point and so I stopped. I always thought to join a cult was a silly thing, I didn’t know it could happen by accident. Removing myself as much as I can is the only logical explanation.

I haven’t given up hope yet. Its an annoying character flaw. Always believing something will work out. I’m not usually right, supposedly that’s part of the adventure.

I have a gofundme, I don’t have a ton to share it with though plus I have been hearing a lot of issues with being able to collect money that has been donated.

If you read this and feel inclined to assist in helping me keep my family’s belongings, I have paypal.me/MegH93 my cash app is $MusesWidow and you can always buy me coffee ko-fi.com/TheMeg

For now, I wait. I”ll work and pray and be conflicted that I still hope.