Break, Broke, Broken

There are many definitions of “broke”. Some people that are broke live on the street, some people that are broke live in government housing, some people that are broke live in their car. There are all kinds of levels of the brokenness. I think that when people look at us we don’t seem to be broke; we have a place to live, we have a car, we have clothes on our backs. Little does anyone know the actual truth; we are broke, 99.9% of the time. And I’m talking like scrounging up change from the couch cushions to buy dinner. Our rent is pretty much never on time. Our phone gets shut off all the time because we can’t pay the bill. I can’t tell you the last time I bought new clothes for myself. Last weekend I didn’t have my medication for a couple days because we didn’t have the money (that was a FUN time for A*). I have had to cancel plans with friends because I didn’t have the gas to get anywhere. I called off work once because I was supposed to bring in some food for someone’s birthday and I couldn’t afford to buy anything.


Broke is when your son needs the next size up in underwear but you can’t afford to get them until pay day. Broke is when you eat noodles three days in a row because you can get a box for a dollar. Broke is making every meal from the dollar store. Broke is stealing tissue boxes from work because you can’t afford toilet paper. Broke is using your employee ID to get food in the employee cafeteria and taking it home for dinner.

A* and I both work, really really hard. Yes, we have made MANY stupid decisions in the past, and haven’t always been the best at budgeting our money. But the problem that we constantly run in to is that we can’t make it to the next paycheck, therefore causing us to borrow money from somewhere else, so by the time the paycheck does come, we owe all of it out to other people anyway. We are far, far down the black hole and life just keeps shoveling dirt on top of our heads. I want more than anything to be able to relax, to not worry how we are going to pay for the basic things that a person needs to survive. There are so many times that I want to do something with C., or buy him something cool, and I am not able to. Like I said, A* and I both work hard, we both have full time jobs, we try so, so hard and never seem to get anywhere.

My greatest wish is that someday I will be able to go to the grocery store WITHOUT my calculator or my budget. In the meantime, I guess we’ll just keep pretending.

Embarassing Bits

~My first LOOOVE happened to be the son of one of my mom’s best friends. So in the summer between sixth and seventh grade, my mom’s friend went out of town and left her son with us. He stayed in the guest room, which immediately took on a fragrance of too much cheap cologne and sweaty boy and I breathed it in because I LOOOOVED him. So one day we were outside and I happened to be wearing white shorts (what, it was the 90’s and I had also paired a MATCHING black and white and red T-shirt with the white shorts) and the boy said, “What’s all over your butt?” Obviously it was my period that had started all over the back of my shorts that were WHITE. I ran inside and whipped the shorts off but shit, I didn’t have a clean towel in there. Knowing that the boy was still outside, I braved the hallway just wearing my T-shirt and streaks down my legs *ahem* and was juuuuust closing the closet door when !BAM! I heard a voice behind me and it was HIM and I didn’t have any pants on! And was bleeding! I pulled that ugly T-shirt down as far as it could go and I RAN to the bathroom and slammed the door shut. I never spoke of that incident again.


~When we would have swim meets in high school, sometimes the team would dress up. One day I wore my new black skirt, high Mary Jane heels, and a tight little sweater number. I was feeling pretty hot, if I did say so myself. So I was walking through the cafeteria and one of the most popular boys in school, the football player/had the hottest girlfriend/everyone knew him and wanted to be his friend guy, he was coming in through the doors from outside right when I happened to be walking by. He looked me up and down and I blushed prettily. “Damn girl, you are looking fine today!” he said, and I was thrilled (insecure high school girl, blah blah blah). I was trying to walk very SEXILY, if there is such a thing aaannnndddd… I tripped. Totally caught my foot on an invisible something on the carpet and stumbled, arms flailing out and trying my best not to fall flat on my face. A full on trip, right in front of the hot football guy AND the entire cafeteria.

~ This is for one of my best friends… we were in choir together and she had been awarded a solo. Please keep in mind this wasn’t anything NEW for my friend; she had been singing in church pretty much her entire life and had had other solos before, so she wasn’t really sweating it. She got up at the appointed time, stood there in the spotlight, and totally forgot the words. She was singing a song from “Jesus Christ Superstar” and the line was “…I turn my head, I back away, I don’t know what to say...” or something like that. She got stuck on “I turn my head” and JUST KEPT REPEATING IT OVER AND OVER like a broken record. “I turn my head… *breath*…. I turn my head…*breath*… I turn my head…” It went on for what seemed like hours but was probably only a couple minutes. I was mortified for her. To this day all I have to do is softly sing “I turn my head” and we are both helpless with laugther.

~When I first discovered blogs I was completely addicted. I also worked at a place similar to a prison camp, and we were NOT allowed to go on the internet for any reason. NOT EVEN ON YOUR BREAK! I was really fast at my job and always was finished with the work before something new came along, so I had a lot of downtime and I wasn’t allowed to do anything. I cannot sit at a desk and stare into space for hours at a time, so of course I would sneak and go online and read blogs. And I got written up a couple times and then you guys? I got FIRED. For reading blogs. I got called into the boss’s office and was told that I was terminated for being on the internet during company time. Then the SECURITY GUARD had to escort me out of the building and they immediately changed the door code, like I was some kind of INTERNET CRIMINAL. First and only time I was fired.

As a mother, pretty much everything to do with C. causes me to worry and feel guilty. This past year, as you can imagine, that fact has been doubled because of all the shit we’ve put the poor little guy through. Moving, separated parents, living with my parents, UN-separated parents, another new place to live… it was a lot for ME to deal with, and I’ve got a little more life experience than the almost five year old. So when C. started to exhibit some undesirable behaviors, I chalked it up to all of this stuff and gave him some extra slack. Not to say that he didn’t get punished for screaming in our faces, or when he out and out refused to listen to anything that we said; he got the time outs, he got sent to his room, he got things taken away. But nothing seemed to be working. And I seemed to be yelling all the time, so frustrated and unable to come up with any kind of solution. Some mornings I would stay in my bed as long as possible (A* gets up with him on the weekends, it is their “special” doughnut and cartoon time together) just because I didn’t want to have to be THAT mom anymore, the one with no patience and who yells all the time. I found myself dreading the time I had to spend with him rather than looking forward to it, because I knew it would end up in a power struggle, usually with both of us in tears. I sobbed to A*, unreasonably wailing that he was going to be the next person up in the clock tower and it was all our fault because we fucked him up so freaking badly. I read books, looked online, spoke to MY therapist about it, talked to anyone and everyone I could think of.


Then I found a parenting program. I work at a children’s hospital, and they have just implemented a new program here. It focuses on the parents, and what they can do to be a better one to their child. C. doesn’t even have to go to the appointments with me; it will (hopefully) teach me better tools and solutions to our problems, and help me to help HIM with anything that he’s been feeling with all the changes he’s had. I just want to make him the best person he can be and I want to do everything in my power to make sure I’ve done everything to make that happen. I can’t even tell you how excited I am to get started, and even just having the appointment scheduled I think has made me a little bit more patient, knowing that help is on the way.

God I love that kid so, so much.