A Glass of Wine and 2 Zebra Cakes

Sure you have seen those Little Debbie Zebra cakes in the gas station, the little white cakes that are 50 cents.  Last night I ate two of them and drank/guzzled a glass of wine, the cheap, $3 stuff that tastes more like grape juice than alcohol.

Why?

Because I am firmly sitting on rock bottom here in Ohio.  As evidenced by the zebra cakes, there is an infinite amount of self loathing going on down here in the pit.  A pit so deep that the delectable coated cake and cream could not budge me at all.

Even as I laugh at funny that sounds, I know that at the heart of it....this is no joke.

There is no sugar coating it, things are rough right now.

For starters, I am falling apart physically.  I have some significant health issues which can only be resolved with a hysterectomy.  I'm not ready for that.  For three weeks, I have been fighting a tear duct infection.  We've both had serious sinus pain and headaches since we moved, along with stomach problems.  Our stomachs have not adapted to the hard mineral water we have to drink here and we both load up on anti gas/anti acid meds everyday.  Oh, and my hair has grown quickly but is falling out.

I suppose that stress could be a contributing factor.  We have been put under a huge amount of stress that we never expected and certainly never asked for either.

Our house still isn't sold.  We don't even have any prospects.  We did drop our first agents and now have a new one.  However, after several months of making it work financially, we just can't any more.  We had to stop paying our mortgage payments on the other house.  

I'd like to take a moment and have a full blown rant.  Why do people pass so much judgement when they find out you have a second mortgage?  We aren't the only people to get ourselves into financial trouble, lots of people do.  We chose to pay our debts instead of filing bankruptcy.  And, I would like to add, not in any time during those years or since have we ever had late payments and have never been delinquent on an account.  In fact, the majority of our $180,000 of credit card debt was from credit cards used/abused by one of my family members.  Instead of prosecution, we assumed the debt. And yet, we get judged for it now as if we weren't responsible.

Ok, back to the house.  We are now in the Hail Mary phase of this.  If we do not get our house sold in the next 75 days, we are looking at one of the following:  foreclosure, short sale, bankruptcy.  It's not looking favorably for us.  

When we moved here, we chose an extremely modest home with low payments and low utilities.  We did that so that we could recover from the 7 years of $2500 mortgage payments.  We wanted some breathing room so that we could do things like travel back home and eventually move back home and pursue more actively adoption or foster care.  Now, we face a mountain of uncertainty and what looks to be financial ruin.

Honestly, I should be in church right now.  If things worked out at all, I'd be sitting in church right now with my niece and nephew.  Keeping in mind that those two kids are my only link to family at all, you can imagine how heartbroken I am that they aren't here.  It was a fight and a juggling act to get them plane tickets.  Less than 24 hours before they were to leave, my nephew fell down a river embankment and tore something in his knee.  I'm incredibly thankful he was not hurt worse and that he had a cell phone on him, because he was alone.  His next week is going to be filled with doctor visits, tests and determining the need for surgery.  My niece didn't want to come alone.  So, I sit here alone.

A week ago, we realized that much of my husband's depression and anxiety had been from an anti depressant he was taking.  His new doctor here got him off of it and he has turned a corner emotionally.  Over the past two weeks, he has admitted to me that he had contemplated suicide to make things easier for me.  I seriously freaked.  We have multiple guns in the house and he knows how to use them.  I'm pissed that an anti-depressant caused so much depression.  It caused that and brain fog and physical pain and six months of me having to carry us both emotionally.  I'm glad to have him back.

Probably one of the more constant and hardest things is the lack of a support system.  We are in the middle of nowhere.  There is a 3 month wait for general healthcare and a 6 month wait for mental healthcare.  I'm the outsider here.  Everyone is friendly and that's great.  However, there's not much room for me inside of the established cliques and bonded social groups.  I've tried to reach out to people the way I have learned.  Invite ladies for lunch or coffee.  No go.  They don't do that much here.  It's a foreign concept to them.  I ask questions of church leaders and ladies at church when any kind of social event is happening.  Shut out.  I get told a lot that it's for kids or just basic info with no invitation.  They truly don't know how to accept a stranger.  And, I could get on a real soap box about this too.  If you can't bring an outsider or newbie into the church and make them feel welcome...well then you should probably not by witnessing to the lost.  A lost person and outsider have a lot in common and neither will make it inside your church if you don't make a place for them.

I honestly don't know when or even if things will turn around.  I hope they do, even though I struggle with where the hope is placed.  It's lonely here in this pit and I hate it, but I'll never make it out alone.  Left to my own doing, I'll contently set here trying to drown the pain in wine and zebra cakes.