Rock Bottom

I’m sitting here, trying to gather my thoughts and figure out where everything started.. How I’ve gotten to the point where I am right now; rock bottom.

Two years ago, it was pouring rain in mid-August. There was a lightning storm. I got into a minor collision with a person that was driving in front of me. She was an older lady, she said she’d never been in an accident before, she told me that she was going to call the police because that’s what her insurance company had suggested she do, even though there was no damage to her car. All I remember happening was looking down, momentarily, then looking up and seeing her brake lights and slamming onto mine and bumping her at maybe 2 miles per hour.

Police showed up.

They asked for my license, registration, and proof of insurance. I spent about 10 minutes trying to get my phone to get a signal so that I could pull up my insurance from my email in it and show it to them. The weather was interfering with everything, that day. The police officer told me that I can just go home and print it out and bring it over to the police station. He didn’t write me any tickets, he let me go, I got home and printed it out and then walked acrossed the street to turn it in. Still no tickets, he had left for the day according to the receptionist. I figured that everything was fine.

Later in August, I lost my place to live, I began couch-surfing and trying to find a new job and trying to get my life back on track.

Fast-forward one year. It’s my daughter’s 9th birthday. I took her to get Mexican food. On our way home, it was getting dark. I flipped on my headlights. I had one out. I was driving down the road about 5 blocks from the restaurant that we had just left and I got pulled over for that headlight. The officer asked for my license, registration, proof of insurance. I gave it all to her. She knocked on my hood to see if she could get my headlight to turn on.. She came back with a stuffed pony for my daughter and asked me to step out of the car. Upon stepping out, she explained that she didn’t want to upset my daughter but that I needed to call someone to come get me, my daughter, and my car because my license had be suspended. I had no idea why my license was suspended.

The officer pulled up the tickets that had rendered me without a license. They dated back to the day of the collision. Even the officer remarked how it was odd that I had received two tickets for essentially the same thing “Driving too fast for road conditions” and “going 10 miles over the speed limit”. Both things that, had I known I was going to be cited for, I would’ve fought against.. but I didn’t have the slightest idea.

I called my dad. He came and got my daughter and I, we picked my mother up from work, and then we got my car.

I spent a month without driving, working and paying off fines in order to get my license back. I got the license re-instated, got a payment plan set-up for the tickets, I thought that I was in the clear. I thought everything would be fine, that I could continue to drive. So, I got into that seat that was always the most comfortable seat, behind the wheel and continued on with my life without a second thought to it.

Fast-forward to January. I got pulled over for having expired tabs. The police officer told me that I had 15 minutes to get two licensed drivers in one car to get me and my car. My license was suspended, again. Upon later researching why it was suspended, I found out that I had received no notice that it would be suspended or anything. In fact, I received notice that it would be if I didn’t continue payments within a period of time that was listed, and technically at the point when I had been pulled over that time hadn’t been reached yet.. and I had already paid all of the fines to have my tabs renewed, to get my payment plan re-instated (I had been between jobs) and to carry on with my life like nothing had happened. At the court date for that moment, they had dropped the charges down and expunged them, told me that I had a period of time to pay the greatly reduced price, and that everything should be good to go.

Now, exactly one year after the first date of being pulled over… I get pulled over for having a license plate light out. Of all things. Only, this time, the officer explains to me that I can’t have someone who isn’t on the registration come get me and my car. The only other person that’s on the registration is someone that I haven’t seen in about 4 years, and when they tried to call him they didn’t get an answer… Which is to be expected, considering it was 2am and we were just leaving Denny’s.

So, my car got impounded. The only security blanket that I had left after losing my place to live, the thing that got me barely from point A to B on a regular basis was ripped from my fingers. On top of that, I lost my job last month because I had been hospitalized for a week. I lost my medical insurance so I had no way of being able to get a doctor to fill out a form that would have ensured that I could keep my job… and I’m still homeless.

For the past year, I have been drowning in debt. I have been unable to make a significant dent. I have been working tirelessly to try and just get by with the recurring bills that I have, my phone.. my storage unit.. gas to get to and from work.. and now, here I am without a car. Without a way to get to and from work if I even had a job. Without a way to find a new job. I’m stranded. Homeless, carless, in a huge amount of debt, and they have a 30 day hold on my car. If I don’t come up with $675 in five days, my car will be auctioned off. If I don’t come up with an additional $680 by the end of the 30 days, plus additional fees (taxes, towing, etc), I will have my car auctioned off. So, I essentially need to come up with $1500 to get my little car with the cracked engine block that was running purely on good luck out of impound.. and I’m jobless, hopeless, and fucking lost.

A friend of mine told me that I can only move up from here. I am writing this because this has always been my therapy.. Writing is what has helped me maintain some kind of form of sanity through all of the ups and downs and crazy that I’ve tirelessly managed to hurdle across my entire life; but right now, I’m feeling like not even that is happening. It’s hard to remember what good can come out of this.

I thought that I had hit rock-bottom when I had lost my place to live two years ago, but I was mistaken. At that point in time, at least I had my car to get me to and from work, to sleep in if need be, to give me at least a shred of piece of mind. Now, I’ve truly experienced it. Now, I’ve really got nothing. No car to get me to see my kids, no job, no money… Just nothing.

Up up up and then so far down down down

I over think things, I question every action I take far too much, and then there are moments where I don’t question it at all and I feel like I should. I feel like right now, that may be one of those times where I should be questioning my shit a little bit more than I am. But, if everything feels so right, how could I dare let logic interfere? How should I tell myself that all of this is lies and slander; how can I explain to myself that I’m just going to end up in the same boat that I was before as far as pain and suffering goes?

I guess these are the risks that hopeless romantics take. These are the things that happen to us on a regular basis, this is the reason why most of our lives we’re just picking up the pieces of some part of us that use to be whole. We let people in, we let down our walls, we hope that maybe they’ll understand us, and then we get burned harder than we were ever burnt before. Or, even worse, we get silence.

I met a boy on the internet a couple of weeks ago. I think that I like him more than I should. He sends me songs that I’ve never heard before, he’s read the same books as me, he says all of the right things. He can go from being the sweetest thing ever, to being the cruelest thing ever, but the cruelty is more just an odd term of endearment. No worries, it’s not actual cruelty. There’s this odd amount of balance about him that strikes a small flame in my heart, that makes me feel like there are butterflies floating about, that makes me wonder if I can have feelings. There’s something about him that makes me feel reckless, that makes me feel like I should make rash decisions, that makes me feel like I could be in love. Yes. Love. So fast, so sudden, there it is. Or, maybe I’m lying to myself. Maybe I’m poisoning myself, slowly but surely. The problem is, if that’s the case, so is he. He’s poisoning himself with me. Maybe we’re about to kill each other, maybe it’ll be beautiful.

I feel like I’m at a point in my life where I’m trying to defy something that’s as natural as gravity. I feel like I’m telling my brain to get fucked and jumping on the rollercoaster that is my heart, once again. I feel like I’m holding on and I don’t see and end in sight, and that nothing else in the world matters. I feel like everything is so right and so wrong all wrapped up into one big, giant burrito.

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Then, on the other hand, I feel broken. I feel lost. I feel like I’m hurting. I feel like I’ve lost something important in my life. I feel like I’m lacking. I feel like I’m trying to fill up the empty spaces as quickly as I can, in an attempt to not hurt so much anymore. I feel like I don’t have the right words to say, that the only people who I want to be around right now are too far away. I feel like I want to set money aside in an attempt to at least try to make it to Steph’s dad’s memorial. I feel like a 4hr drive is a lot more plausible than a 6hr drive, but I feel like I should be able to do the 6hr drive too. It’s bad enough that I missed what was held for Brad. I shouldn’t miss this at all. I should be there, I should see my friend, I should say my goodbyes.

There won’t be any more epic stories, no more talking about music for hours on end. There won’t be any more words of “you don’t know how to drink, little girl” or any more shots poured for me. There won’t be any more family gatherings, birthday celebrations, or moments of heroics with him there. All I can  think about is how much it hurts to me, and how much more it must hurt for my best friend to lose his dad. I can’t imagine losing my own dad. I’d be so broken right now.

If I lost my dad today, I don’t know that I’d be able to function tomorrow. I feel like, at times, I’ve lost my dad years ago and he’s yet to come back. There are small little glimpses of him here and there, but I think that now that I’m an adult he just doesn’t know how to talk to me. He doesn’t know how to be a dad anymore. He calls my bluffs all the time, he asks me if the things that I’m doing are for good purpose or for some broken brain issues that I’m having when it comes to over-analyzing my situation. He reminds me that I’m a failure as far as being a parent goes. He makes a big scene whenever he can. He’s stressed out, he’s lost inside of his computer, I feel like I don’t even know him half the time. I miss the mornings I’d get up in the morning and get a ride from him to school. I miss stopping for coffee along the way, I miss our talks, I miss just having him near me. I use to think that when my dad was with me, that I was safe. Now, when my dad is near me, I just get mad because he’s so far fucking gone into his laptop.

Sometimes, I wonder if my dad even gives a shit or if he just pretends that he does because it’s his duty as a dad. It’s one of those “do you love me because you love me, or do you love me because society tells you that you have to love me” things. I just feel like 99% of the time, my parents loathe me. They hate the choices that I’ve made, the situation that I’ve managed to get myself into, they don’t like any aspect of my life. I feel like every time I’m around them, I get some look of disapproval. I get lectured about something, most things, and I feel like nothing I do is right. I keep trying and trying to please them, but there’s no pleasing people who choose to be so miserable.

And to think, my dad use to be the most important person in my life. My dad was the one that I ran to when I began to realize that I had a drug issue. My dad was the one that I felt I could talk to without too much fear of judgement. My dad use to be the light of my life, where has he gone? Why can’t I have those things anymore?

Broken

I feel like my life is being divided into a million pieces. I feel like my heart is made of glass, and I managed to just throw the biggest rock I could through it. Today, I broke up with my boyfriend because I was afraid that I love him too much, because I was afraid that I would break my own heart if I stayed with him. I don’t know how any of this makes sense, I just felt like it did. I felt like he was my soulmate, almost, and I don’t feel like he felt the same way… I told him I wanted us to just be friends, that I felt it was safer for me that way. I told him that I’ve been struggling with depression a lot lately, that I feel like he didn’t sign up for this, that it would destroy us.. that it was inevitable. I just wish I could show him how I feel, how much I like him, and make him understand more just how terrifying it all is to like someone so much. I feel like the flood gates to my eyes have opened, and now I just can’t stop crying.

There are so many days that I try to be strong, this is not one of those days. I try to pride myself in the ability to compose myself, but I’m so terrified of confrontation that I did all of this shit through a text message. I could’ve told him to his face, but I was afraid of crying in front of him. I didn’t want to seem weak, I wanted to seem strong and smart. i wanted to feel like what I was doing was right; but the truth is I don’t even know if it is right at all. I don’t know anything anymore. If it was suppose to happen, why does it hurt so bad? Why am I second-guessing my choice? I think everything would be easier if he’d just text me back, but all I got were three replies.. Three in comparison to my 8ish.

I feel like I’m slipping,. I feel like I just want to become a recluse and hate the world. I feel like doing the things that I think make sense don’t make sense at all. I feel like I want to scream; like I’m drowning. I feel like a big hot mess.. And it’s all my own fault.

I need to suck it up and go talk to him in person. I need to be an adult. I need to do all of these things that society would define as right, but most of all.. I need to do one thing each day that scares me.