Stress explained

I enjoy my job but its just shy of enough money to support my family on. But tell that to the government that continuously tries to tell me that we make more money than we do and therefore they want to take away any small help we ask for.

This year, we will make $19,000 and a little change. Health and Welfare has decided that this is a fantastic amount of income to support a family of 5 with, and that we really don't need nearly as much help as before so they generously cut the food stamps we use in half.  But that was only after I called them and told them that they needed to stop assuming that we were magically earning $16,000 more than we were.  Somewhere along the way, someone decided that we should be making more so *poof* we were.  If only life worked that way.  Instead, someone altered our income in the paperwork, and *poof* we lost our food stamps. It wasn't us.  We have done everything to be honest and truthful in what we report. 

So again, the fight to just survive increases. Just when we were getting to the point where we weren't terrified of losing everything, we take a step back.  A step back to lying awake at night in fear that our children will be homeless. A step back to wondering how we're going to afford enough food to get through the month. A step back to cutting expenses... but what expenses are left to be cut?

Technically, its not my birthday

Its well into the small hours of the 19th so my birthday is over. I can't say it was all that much better than last year. Just like I can't say things are all that much better than last year.

I'm not sure where it went wrong. I suppose it was the evening as tasks piled up at work. Or maybe it went wrong before that. Maybe it was over the weekend or even before then. I spent so much time trying to make it good for everyone else. I wished I could take them all away to the city where we could eat German food and do all sorts of fun things together. Lately, I've realized even more how much they miss out on because of me. If I couldn't take them off on an adventure, maybe I could at least bring a little adventure to them.

I started planning a week ago. I wanted a black forest cake. From there, I planned out a dinner of schnitzel, potatoes, red cabbage and bread rolls. I wanted homemade food. I wanted a nice birthday breakfast as well, so cinnamon rolls were planned. It was all the things I would have loved for someone to do for me.

So I cooked my own birthday dinner. The family kept up on dishes, which I was grateful for but it came with the price of listening to people as they told me over and over how many times they loaded the dishwasher. I would have been happy to do my own dishes and did a fair share of them, just to getaway from the complaining that I was using so many dishes. I baked my cake with some help from my oldest. The price of the ingredients suffocating my conscience.

Twinges of annoyance abound. Constant reminders of how I fail, and reminders of how little I matter otherwise.
The phone call when I've gone to work, "I couldn't remember if you went to work at 2:30 or 3:30."
"Oh, well, its 4:30 now, so I can't really talk."
The passive-aggressive remark from someone I didn't post a birthday message to earlier in the year, but they were posting one to me. I actually don't post birthday messages.

Finding out halfway through the night that my work load doubled.

It builds, you know. Those small grievances build to where I want to burst into tears. So, as the sounds of snoring rumble through the room, I get up.  Angry because I have to be the one to leave, and although its technically not my birthday, it still is because I haven't gone to sleep yet. Angry because we live in a culture that builds up your birth into some sort of frantic day to prove you are loved and worthy enough to take up space on the earth. And angry because I obviously have failed at something so simple as that.

Where are the bootstraps?

All of this is conflicting: the daily lifestyle of pain that never actually ends, the struggle to pay bills on a wage that isn't designed to support a family and the growing pains of continual change versus stagnancy.  Some days I really don't think that we will rise out of this and be better people for it.  

Isn't that the rub?  Isn't that the goal? To learn some great truth in life and be better for the struggle?  That ties into the feel good, sweep-it-away mantras of people who don't actually get it. The platitude that this too shall pass.  I want to ask when.  When people who live in giant homes and consider their stock options tell me that they understand, they had car troubles once, I want to ask exactly how did they remedy car troubles if they never made enough money to buy food and pay for housing. I don't ask.  I say thank and move on. How do you leave if you are stranded?

This is the thing: there is no money for that second opinion, or even the first one if we are responsible.  We aren't, and so in addition to the crippling pain, we have crippling bills. With "birthday month" upon us and Christmas barreling down on us, we grasp at straws to pull things together. 

I'm in a stupor of disbelief, wondering just why on earth we haven't been able to find the bootstraps to pull ourselves out of this disaster of a life.