It’s not a personal failure, it’s systemic.
I’m really not doing well. Sometimes I think if it weren’t for my dogs I would just give up.
It’s surprising that I’m not really having a full on breakdown but I realized recently that all my keeping it together is actually a freeze state of depression. Once a sensitive person who easily cried, I can’t even cry anymore. It’s a very weird feeling. I am exhausted and numb.
I tried to make a video today to share a story and realized that I am mostly expressionless. I also can’t talk fluidly like I used to. It’s very hard. So I didn’t make the video.
I had been living in my car with my two dogs, which is hell. Sometimes on the little bit of quickly dwindling savings I have, I would get a hotel room. Then it turned out one of my old school peers/friends was moving out of state for a year for a job and is keeping her house. I basically invited myself to rent it from her, hopeful that, with a place to leave my dogs, I could get on my feet again. I told her I would pay her, believing UberEats and DoorDash would be busy enough. Not so. I don’t know how I’m going to pay her or, ultimately, take care of myself and my sweet little dogs. The rejection letters for jobs keep rolling in. And I also can’t interview, which doesn’t help at all. I bomb each interview because, for some reason, not only do I not talk as fluidly as I used to, I lose all words during an interview and sound incredibly stupid, leaving interviewers staring at me clearly wondering why I am even there. So now, knowing this after this happening in several interviews and even having to get an accommodation for my thesis defense, I can’t even breathe even thinking about it. I am capable of so much outside of my inability to interview if I could just get a chance, and so wish I knew how to just start my own thing.
What I do know is that over time, this kind of financial struggle and stress causes literal brain damage. And I can’t even get the health care to tackle these issues. Not only to figure out why I can’t interview (I think it’s either CPTSD or autism), but also the damage that all the trauma and stress has caused. This system breaks your wings and insists you fly. I hate it here. Knowing homelessness is completely systemic and in other countries it doesn’t exist. Knowing that if my dead brother had lived in, say, France and gotten the help and resources he needed, he may still be alive. That maybe in another system my mother wouldn’t be diseased and unhoused. Or maybe in a rehabilatory system rather than a for-profit prison system, my biological father would have had a chance. Also knowing as I carry over $200,000 in student load debt for a worthless degree, debt that effects lower classes most, that countries like Denmark level the playing field between the haves and have-nots by not only offering free education for its students but also by providing a living stipend they never have to pay back. Because happy healthy citizens ultimately equate to a happy healthy country but the United States doesn’t see that because we live in an imperialist corporations where we are all just cogs driving corporate wealth and power.
I have no support system. I’m carrying all of this alone, in silence. My days are silent.
Nobody chooses to struggle like this. One of my dogs is declining in health and I would do anything to be able to get him into a specialist. They are all I have. He, little love of my life, might have heart problems and I don’t know and can’t properly find out.
I carry the weight of my estranged mother’s problems, too. What’s going on with her is just absolutely heartbreaking.
We never had a great relationship. But she is incredibly ill and unable to walk and has also endured unimaginable hardship. She is battling cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and kidney disease. Despite her severe health conditions, she is now homeless, spending what may be her final years without a stable home due to the egregious mismanagement and cruelty at the apartment she lived at last, where, I believe, the manager or someone in the office stole from her.
The property manager has created a hostile and abusive environment that most of the residents describe as a nightmare. Her behavior, which includes ripping up doctor’s notes in front of tenants, calling residents derogatory names, yelling at them, and denying essential disability accommodations, has left residents terrified and powerless. She has even entered apartments without notice, mysteriously inflated rents, and demanded exorbitant fees for basic accommodations. Meaning $2,000 for doctor-recommended disability accommodations. This is illegal but the law disregards the poors.
When my mother moved there under a previous, kinder manager, she was promised a ground-floor apartment due to her inability to walk. However, when the current manager took over, she repeatedly denied my mother this accommodation, going so far as to yell at her, “You’re gonna die!” over the phone following her cancer diagnosis. It was only after I contacted the Department of Civil Rights that my mother was grudgingly moved to the first floor—following unnecessary friction and delay.
Exactly six months later—the minimum time frame to avoid an eviction looking like retaliation—my mother was falsely accused of not paying her rent. For five years, my younger brother, who I never hear from (whole other story) had been reliably paying her rent using her Social Security Disability card. Initially, the manager claimed two months were unpaid. When my brother, overwhelmed and busy as an electrician, admitted he didn’t have receipts for the money orders, the accusation inexplicably escalated to six months of unpaid rent.
The office was in disarray during this time, with the manager admitting that two staff members had been fired. Despite this, she persisted with baseless accusations and ultimately evicted my mother. Tragically, this resulted in my disabled mother losing all her furniture. As we packed what little we could, other residents came forward, sharing similar stories of being falsely accused of unpaid rent. One tenant revealed they were accused of being behind for an entire year but avoided eviction because they had receipts—something my mother lacked.
Now, my mother is homeless, clinging to her few possessions, including my deceased brother’s urn (the thought of her trying to stay in hotels with my dead brother’s urn on random hotel dressers haunts me). She has been repeatedly turned down for housing due to this wrongful eviction and was nearly stripped of her disability benefits because of her lack of stable housing. They actually called her and said that she will no longer receive her disability benefits because she’s homeless. This is all systemic.
And I’m so very tired. I really can’t take it anymore.
I am sorry hardship you and your mom going thru , i go on indeed apply 100 jobs blindly and hope someone calls me, hard student loans your not alone. It good you have your dogs.. remember things will get better
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