Houses and Hearts (Warning:Troubling Emotional Stuff Within)

[lorin]

Ok, here is my 50 cents worth (inflation). I don't want to turn this about me but I will share a few things. I am a cutter all my life, but I am under control for the last 8 years or so. There are several other members of this site that also have this problem. It has nothing to do with age, so forget the thirty year old bit. If it is a behavior at 16 it is a behavior at 30 and a behavior at 56. It is your method of relief and your method of reaching out. The fact that you posted here instead of cutting is the first step in redirecting your ways of asking for help. You may be misinterpreting your NOT cutting as failure when it is success.

If therapy is not something you are ready for then seek help online or in a group. Here is a link to a site I helped to found years and years ago. I have not been there in a long time but I know for sure they have many members with the same issues. www.mentalearth.com/ That being said, do not disappear into a virtual world. Use it as a step to 3D contact. And be aware, that when you go to a mental health site, there are people with troubles (uh duh) and troubling behavior. So go in with your eyes wide open.

Lastly, and probably most important. Go to your family doc and request that he fill out some FLMA (family leave medical act) papers for depression. It will protect your job.

[Cambo]

I am sorry if you are still reading this.

Never apologise for expressing yourself honestly.

I have asked a few girls out on dates but I get shot down, and I have since learned that everyone thinks I am weird.

Some girls like weird. If they didn't, I'd still be a virgin. That said, you should probably concentrate on founding your own sense of self-worth before you look to others to validate it.

Losing isn't about what you have or don't have, it is about what and who you are.

False. It is part circumstance, part perspective. There is nothing inherent about either.

I can't kill myself, because I don't have anyone to take care of my dogs. I hate myself for that: how stupid a reason is that for not killing yourself, dogs?

I think that's a very touching reason. It shows compassion for fellow creatures. And if you have the capacity to extend compassion to your dogs, you have the capacity to extend it to yourself.

I've been where you are, or in a very similar place. I know how inescapable it seems. Try to believe me when I say that's an illusion. This is an experience you are having, not a cosmic reflection of your innermost self.

Kia Kaha, my bro. Arohanui.

[Shuram Gudatetris]

My last post was probably a bit inappropriate for the General Discussion forum, and maybe this whole thread. I don't know if a thread can be moved somewhere else, but if possible that might be a good idea.

I tried taking some action, but it didn't work out very well. I talked about it in the Depression thread.

[aliantha]

Where do you want it moved to? Maybe the Close? Happy to do that, if you want.

[Shuram Gudatetris]

Where do you want it moved to? Maybe the Close? Happy to do that, if you want.

Yeah, that was what I was thinking. GD seems like it has more of a light-hearted air, where as the Close you know what you might be getting in to.

[aliantha]

Okay, done.

[Linna Heartbooger]

I am really bad at taking advice. I haven't volunteered anywhere. I don't go out to try to meet new people. I certainly haven't made any effort to keep my house clean.

Advice that another person gives is often stuff that worked for the person speaking... no reason why it would automatically be "the thing for you."

I've been in places of isolation.
Taking even the tiniest step to get out of it can be a great victory - though it sure don't look like much at first... does it?
A lot of times, I've wished that the really uninteresting first steps to working on something difficult or getting healthy were accompanied by... applause and fanfare - or at the very least the sound of horns.

But now it hits me that yes, in fact, yes you have gone out and tried to meet new people.
At least once.
You went to that big tetris competition.
That took effort.
It required a lot of effort - probably a lot more than you imagined at first.
It required planning and problem-solving to do, (I believe I could find the thread to prove it!) but you did it.

I went and talked to my HR director. I told him I was very unhappy and had been for some time, and that I needed help. He gave me a phone number to call. I haven't called it yet. I tried three times to call today. The third time, they told me in a recording that all information was private unless I was a danger to myself, and then I hung up.

I don't know why I am typing all this stuff out.

Well, when things like this happen to me, I definitely want to vent about it to someone who that would make sense to.
I think you're painting a picture of what it looks like to see:
"Okay, I feel like things are messed-up inside me.
And then I look for the people who are supposedly appointed to help people like me...
and I find out that things are messed-up outside of me, too!!"

messed-up as in: "When I need help, the last thing I need is a disembodied, recorded voice on the line telling me it can be trusted with all information... except pertaining to stuff that would be perceived to be suicide-related!"

I have allways tried so hard to be responsible, because I was taught that you had to be responsible to get the good things in life...

...Meanwhile, the reckless youths grew up to have wife and kids and are living the dream (of course they have problems, too, but they are not alone).

See, this... this is understandable. It feels really unfair; I think most people in your shoes would be pretty mad.

[lucimay]

cameron, missouri??

you're in cameron? wow! i've actually BEEN to cameron, missouri!!

my advice, MOVE!! that should help your depression A LOT!!!


(i'm trying to be funny here)


seriously, i really have been to cameron. i was visiting a friend in KC.
we went camping at a park near cameron during a serious heatwave.
it was so hot we just slept out in the open on a couple of quilts!
(ok well more like passed out) no tent nur nuthin! if i remember correctly
there was a lake or a big pond or something nearby. like very nearby.
a few yards nearby. like we sorta passed out on the bank, i think.
it was back in the day (early 80's). part of my misspent yout.
i met a guy there named jeff. we became pen pals. yes, seriously. pen pals.
he used to dress up like a vampire.
he had a coffin and black silky cloak and everything!
well i think it was a wooden box he built. he sent me pics.
i haven't heard from him in a long time.
i wonder if he still lives in cameron.
do you know a blond, blue-eyed guy named jeff mitchell
who used to dress up like a vampire, Shuram?


anyway, i am pulling for you. i keep a candle on my desk here
and when anyone needs good mojo, i light it up and send good
mojo out.
i've just lit it up for you.
it smells like lavender.

and remember, you have to participate in your own happiness.
sometimes, when i'm feeling really shitty, it makes me feel better
to help someone else.
also...this may sound silly but, i've recently started practicing smiling.
if you can send out good mojo and smiles to others it comes back at you.
i swear, it does.

[lorin]

and remember, you have to participate in your own happiness.

absolutely the best thing anyone has ever said anywhere. ever. I love this quote.


btw - this is in my tag, but it also gets lost. no one notices it.
www.wimp.com/loveyourself/

[Avatar]

...and remember, you have to participate in your own happiness.

Amen.

Hell, you don't just have to participate. You need to create it. Even if it's just in your head.

--A

[Shuram Gudatetris]

Thank you aliantha, Avatar, Cambo, Linna, lorin, and lucimay for the support and advice.

I didn't realize how negatively I think about the results--both good and bad-- of all my actions until recently. I guess I now have to sort of re-train my brain to think more rationally than I am used to...I have been living by this rule: "I fail at almost everything because I am a loser, and I can only accomplish good things because I spend too much time/effort on those things because I have nothing better to do because I am a loser." ...or something to that effect.

Well, I thought I had more to say, but I am still trying to process a lot of stuff. All I can say at the moment is thank you

Edit: ...and now its time to clean the house!

[Brinn]

Nice!

[Linna Heartbooger]

I didn't realize how negatively I think about the results--both good and bad-- of all my actions until recently. I guess I now have to sort of re-train my brain to think more rationally than I am used to...I have been living by this rule: "I fail at almost everything because I am a loser, and I can only accomplish good things because I spend too much time/effort on those things because I have nothing better to do because I am a loser." ...or something to that effect.

Good for you for not trying to say it all at once..
Because just this alone is a really big deal. (tm)

My counselor said something similar just beautifully... with sensitivity but matter-of-fact directness, she observed:
"So no matter how well you do something, it will never be enough?"

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Terrance Real on Self Esteem and Depression

[Ananda]

In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.

Not sure how it fits here, but somehow this came to mind. We are so at odds with ourselves and selfimage.

Shurlord, my dear, we tend to be terribly difficults on ourselves at times. I have known friends who will go to great lengths to justify or make well other peoples mistakes and actions while, in the same breath, being unreasonably difficult on themselves. But all the words with which we could fill the sky wont do a thing for you until you decide to be easy on yourself and take the happiness that is right in front of you at any given moment. As avatar said, fake it till you make it. And, it isnt other people who make you happy, it is you. I understand though that behaviour patterns are difficult to break. Anyway, I really wish you well and hope that you do too.

Edit to say I mean things much softer than it looks when I reread it. I'm not always very good at writing these things. So, to be perfectly clear. I have thought about you and hoped things were okay for you.

[Avatar]

Edit: ...and now its time to clean the house!

Good on you.

--A

[aliantha]

Edit: ...and now its time to clean the house!

Good on you.

--A

What Av said.

[Shuram Gudatetris]

I am losing my house.

I already lost my heart.

I have always had mixed feelings about this house. It's not the one I wanted, but it was the one my then-wife thought would make her happy. I could barely afford it, but she promised she was going to get a job and help with it. Which she never did, but our marriage didn't last much longer after buying this house, anyway.

When we split up, I went through a destructive phase. Let the house go to hell. Spills, messes, punched holes in the wall. And the market was shit. After we split up, I felt like I couldn't sell it, because I had trashed it, damaged it, and people weren't buying.

Plus when we split up, I was also temporarily laid off. It was a crazy time. That was 2009.

During that time, I got about a month or so behind on my house payment, which I never seemed to be able to get caught up on, but was never really worried about it, either.

Back in 2012, I started missing work because of depression, and lost a whole month of work, actually six weeks I think, when I (for lack of better term) broke down. I missed a little over a week when I tipped, then went to the hospital for four days, took a little time for myself, and then my HR boss sort of gave me the runaround for a couple of weeks once I felt I was ready to go back to work. I was something like three or four months behind on my house payment once things "normalized."

I also picked up a roommate in 2012. A couple of months after the hospital. My cousin. My jobless, alcoholic cousin. He was "trying to turn his life around." He said. He was really just using me. He only worked about a single month at three different jobs in the entire time he lived with me, almost two years. When he did work, he spent every. last. penny. on alcohol.

He was latched on like a leech. I spent a year trying to get him to leave. He always had a two week plan that was about four weeks on the horizon. I had my own shit I was dealing with, my inner demons, and having him around made everything so much worse.

Anyhow, I had gotten four months behind in 2012, and had mixed feelings about the house anyway, and I had a problematic roommate. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to keep my house. I wanted to just let it foreclose. I stopped making the house payment and got six months behind. And got foreclosure letters.

I was torn in different directions and didn't know what to do. On the one hand, I hated this stupid house. It was a money pit that my ex-wife cursed me with. And letting it foreclose would solve my roommate dilemma.

But on the other hand, it was MY house. Sure, I'd been dumping my money into it like crazy (I could barely afford the payments), but all that money was mine, and it was paying for MY house. My worthless roommate would never shut up about how awesome a house it was. Sure, he just liked living there for free, but it was nice to hear that something of mine was GOOD.

Also, even if we parted on bad terms, my ex-wife and I grew close after we split up. She's become one of my best friends. I didn't want to screw her by letting the house foreclose, because her name was still on it.

I owed $8,000 in back payments, and I had 3 or 4 thousand in my account, but the bank said they would still continue with the foreclosure process even if I paid them everything I had.

So I filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy. To save the house. That I didn't even want. Don't know what the fuck is wrong with me.

So, I kept the house, and the worthless roommate.




Then in January 2014, I took the next step in my demise. I let another family member move in.

But this one came with four kids. Aged 10, 8, 3, and 1 years. Pretty broad spectrum. And they came from a chaotic home. They were uncivilized.

And I had my own shit I was dealing with. I had been trying to teach myself a sense of self worth. Which I never learned. Probably because I was taking care of a loser who brought me down all the time.

Well, I cracked. It was too much. My alcoholic and violent cousin always being drunk and picking fights with me. Four wild children who broke everything I owned. And their mother who wasn't much better than the alcoholic roommate.

I had never entirely got over my suicidal thoughts. But at that point I was trapped because I couldn't even kill myself, because there were too many people depending on me. I ended up back in the hospital, and they threw a band-aid on me, and sent me back out to the wolves.

Actually, I am sure they tried to help me. But the only reason I went there was to prove they couldn't help me. When I decided I was right, I put a smile on my face, told them I was feeling better, and they let me go.

I was just biding my time, because, at that point, I knew that suicide was inevitable. Oddly enough, knowing it was eventually going to happen actually made me feel better. In an strange way, I suppose it gave me something to look forward to.

I got my drunk cousin the fuck out my house finally. When you're living on borrowed time, you don't want to waste it on being miserable with a miserable drunk.

Once he was out of the house, something peculiar happened. Things got a lot better.




I actually started liking those damn kids. I took it upon myself to potty train the 3.5 year old, and it worked. (I bribed her with candy, but it fucking worked! Better than her mother's plan, which was to keep buying diapers until she was thirty, apparently.) I spent time with the two older kids, and it turned out they were pretty cool. They were inquisitive and liked spending time with me.

I was actually happy. Out of the blue, just like that *snap*, I was happy. I never even saw it coming.

I felt useful. I felt loved. I felt *part* of something.

And then, one day, with no warning, their mother told me she was moving out, moving back in with her abusive husband. "He's changed. The kids miss him. Blah, blah, blah." I tried to tell her how stupid it was, but she didn't hear me.

That was bad. That was rough. It wasn't just that they left, but how sudden it was. They said, come visit! We'll visit! But they never came to visit. And every time I tried to go see them, they were "busy" that weekend. They cut me off.

It was rough for several weeks, but I got through it, got over it. I thought I had gained something. I thought, maybe I could be a dad. Maybe I do have something to offer someone. Maybe, just maybe, I had value?

But maybe not.

I don't have a large social circle, but I was determined to get a girlfriend. I had a huge house, good job, why couldn't I hope to have a family someday? A wife and kids? I hadn't dated anyone since my ex-wife and I split up. But I was determined to change that.

I was brave enough to ask out some women from work, and also some women who were friends of friends that I came across at every-so-often social engagements.

Some said yes. But one of two things happened every single time. They either broke off the date before we went out, or I never got another date after the first. Two cases of each of those.

And then there was on-line dating.

Using two different sites, okcupid and plenty of fish, I never got one single message back. Not one. Ok, that's (barely) a lie. I think three different women messaged me back one time each.

And I'm talking massive amounts of women. Dozens. I wouldn't say hundreds, but maybe over a hundred. I didn't count. And I'm not saying I obsessively sent hundreds of messages to hundreds of different women. I am talking about slowly, over the course of a year or so, not giving up on it. And it's not like I was just going after super hot ones way out of my league. They were "average" women that seemed to have similar interests to me.

I asked my ex-wife to look at my profiles--mind you, we are good friends now, and she's remarried with kids now. She said they were ok, not bad at all, "good" profiles. She offered a couple of minor critiques and pointers, which I listened to, but she said I had done a good job. I even showed her some of the people I had messaged and what I sent. She said I was doing fine, and had no idea why I was having so bad of luck.

Anyway.

So, I tried. But there's something wrong with me. But enough about that.

Well, actually, it was really starting to fuck me up in the head. I went back to counselling, but I was trying to manage.

Anyhow.




After my cousin Nicole, the one with the four kids, after her husband had been beaten her up a few more times, she called me up and asked if she could move back in. Of course she could. Right?

Only it was different. They had been gone a year. The kids were more uncivilized than ever.

When last they lived with me, those good three months we had after the alcoholic cousin left but before they moved out, that was summer. I worked the evening shift at work, but being summer, I could send time with them.

Now they were in school. When I was working, they were home. When they were in school, I was home. And they were uncivilized, wild, crazy: fighting amongst themselves and breaking shit all the time.

The 4.5 year old still wore diapers to bed. Actually, her mom put her in diapers about 7pm, and she would pee through one or two before she went to bed. The 2 year old was not being engaged to talk or potty train. The 9 and 11 year olds were always fighting and yelling at each other and breaking shit. Hell, they all took turns breaking shit.

All this stuff I only get to be a part of on the weekend. I never saw them during the week. I couldn't get on day shift or night shift. I was stuck on the 3pm to 11pm shift. And working 1 to 3 Saturdays a month as well. I treid my best to work with them, but I just wasn't around enough.

I was already screwed up when they moved back in. And now I had another bad situation that couldn't figure out how to improve.

The mom:
Their mom had back problems. She went into her first surgery a couple months after moving in the second time. It was nerve pain. She couldn't move around before the surgery very well. She had a long recovery. She re-injured her nerves a couple months after surgery and had to get another surgery. The second one didn't work. She needs to get a different kind of surgery, but before the state health care will pay for it, she needs to do so many months of physical therapy just to ensure that the surgery is necessary. But she had been living in Kansas, and I live in Missouri. So she had lived in Missouri for a year, and now she's in limbo with a jacked up back and leg as she waits for the Missouri benefits kick in.




So they moved in in August of 2015. I did my best, and more or less managed for almost a year. Despite the fact I was in over my head, and did not have the knowledge or skills to deal with any of that stuff.



But that's only half the story. Here's the kicker.

Summer of 2015, I bought a $14,000.00 motorcycle in cash.

Now, I was still in the bankruptcy program. I had $10,000 saved up. You know, just money for emergencies. Money to feel secure. That sort of thing.

Late spring, I checked my bankruptcy statement, and it looked like nothing had come off from what I owed on back payments for the house. At the time when my bankruptcy went through, I was behind $12,000. Now three years into the program, it was saying that I now owed $14,000 on back house payments.

I called my lawyer, and asked, What's up with that?

He said, and I quote, "Mumbo jumbo. La dee da. This looks fine. Everything looks fine. Let me punch up some numbers...Oh yeah. This looks just fine." I had a couple of hospital bills pop up into the program after filing and those were paid off first. But he assured me I had nothing to worry about. So I didn't.

Well, just goofing around, I was looking at motorcycles for sale. Because I effing love bikes. I just like to look around once in a while. I already owned two really nice bikes. But one was old (an '87 Sportster) and I worked on it more than I rode it, and the other was a sport bike ('07 Buell Firebolt) fun as hell to ride, but uncomfortable for long distances. So, there I was, just casually browsing. And I saw the bike of my dreams.

This was like a month or two after talking with my lawyer and being reassured that everything was fine.

$13,900.00 was the asking price. They were firm. And it was a steal at that price. Blue book was 16,500.

I only had 10k. But my job paid good enough that I could work 16 to 20 hours of overtime a week and have an extra $3,000 in six weeks. So that's what I did. Because I had to have that bike.

I over-worked myself. Severely.

My job was physically demanding. I loaded lead plates into a machine. 15 lb. stacks of lead plates, 8 times a minute, standing, all day long. And the machine is finicky, and the plate quality always varied. So it was mentally challenging as well, because pay was based on production, and the finicky machine had to be ran juuust right to get good production.

For six weeks, I did that for 12 hours a day. I was completely burned out, completely exhausted to my core, by the time I bought that bike.

Then, two weeks later my cousin and her four kids moved in. I was in hell.

I was flat broke when they moved in. And I never could get caught up, trying to take care of all those people. My bankruptcy payment was huge. Without working overtime, at least half my paycheck went to my bankruptcy payment.

Between the chaotic lifestyle and the constant financial stress, I was fighting a losing battle.




In January, last year, after they'd been living with me for five months, my lawyer called me. "We're too far behind. They're going to dismiss your case and take your house unless you pay them $450 more a month. $1650 to $2100."

"That's over $100 a week," says I. "You just told me eight months ago every thing was okay."

"Well," he says, and proceeds to recite all the figures I pointed out to him 8 months ago. "So that's where we're at. Lose the house, or pay an extra $110 a week. We go up to $2100 a month and everything will be fine." Like it's no big deal.

$110 a week is a lot of fucking money when you're trying to take care of five extra people. But I was too stressed out to deliberate it. I told my lawyer, "Fine. Whatever."

So things got tighter. I got tighter. But I kept pushing on. Kids were wild and destroying my home around me while I was at work, and I had no help and no support. But I pushed through.

For a while.




Then, in July of 2016, on my birthday, my lawyer calls me up.

"Looks like we made a mistake. They're going to dismiss your case and take the house out from under you and the four kids you've been desperately trying to support." I am paraphrasing just a bit. "We need to get to $2200 for the plan to work. But you don't have the income to support that. So, you're going to have to try to get the bank to refinance your loan, or defer some of these payments. But you already tried that didn't you? Yeah, that's what I thought. There's not much we can do here."

I asked, "So why can't we go to $2200?"

"You don't make enough income to support that. Unless you got a raise of some sort, did you?"

"No."

"Well, there's just not much we can do." Here's the part I can't remember very closely. I was hungover this whole time btw. My drinking was a little out of control at that time. "If you can bring a pay slip by, we can look it over just to be sure, but I don't think this is going to work."




That's when I gave up. On everything. I didn't go to work that day. And I never went back.

I called in. I called my HR manager. Told him I was fucked up big time. He told me to pick up FMLA papers. I didn't pick them up, but I kept calling in. He asked my why I hadn't picked up the papers, I told him I couldn't go get them. So he fired me.

I had tried to kick my cousin and her four kids out. She said she had a plan and was going to move out in August. I was just going to kill myself, but she and her kids had to move out first. I'd had the plan since forever ago, so I ordered the stuff I needed.

But she never moved out. And I couldn't do anything with the people in the house.




But all this was months ago. July and August. I am not suicidal anymore. I've grown too close to the kids that live with me. Even if they moved out now, there's too much guilt now for me to kill myself.

But I have no plan for life.

I had the best job I could ever hope to get, and I lost it over nothing, failed completely and horribly. I've been doing everything I can for so long to keep this house, but I failed at that, failed miserably and utterly. I've sold off my motorcycles for fractions of what they were worth so that I could keep paying utilities. But next month is the last month I can do that before I am out of money.

All I had to do was take that $14,000 and put it towards my back house payment. And *poof* those back payments are gone. Then none of this would have happened. Instead, I bought the motorcycle. Now, I have no motorcycle, no money, and all those back payments still unpaid (even more now! ) I can't even begin to describe or justify that. It's the worst thing I ever could have done in life.

The bank told me they would initiate foreclosure on Jan 7 if I didn't bring my account back to even. On Feb 10th I got a letter from a law office saying I have 30 days to dispute the validity of the foreclosure.

I've lost everything.

And there's still five people in this house expecting me to take care of them. I don't know what they are still doing here. What do they want me to do?

I can't take care of them when I have a job, and I can't support them when I don't.




I had no idea all this was going to come out. I only intended to quickly summarize an update. I didn't mean for it to be so long and depressing.

All of this was just to say that I am losing the house that so symbolically and symbiotically relates to my heart.

[StevieG]

That sounds really tough SG - it's heartbreaking to read Sending good mojo over the web!

[Avatar]

Damn man, that's really rough. Can't say how sorry I am to hear it.

Doesn't help much I know, but will be thinking of you. Hope like hell something comes up.

Good luck man.

--A