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.