After a hellacious week, I was informed today that come July 1 I’ll be homeless. My landlord, who is my best friend’s mother, wants me to move out so her grandson from NC can move in. She has been lovely letting me stay here this long in exchange for helping her with errands and around the house. But I’m broke and unemployed. I have no idea how I’m going to survive this one.
Wallow with me after the squiggle….
I’m at my lowest point since losing my dream job 11 years ago. I was flying high then—I was saving money, I had stock options, I had finally succeeded after struggling for decades with undiagnosed ADD and Aspergers. The day I was laid off, I had a breakdown in the HR Director’s office. To this day I don’t know why I didn’t walk down the block and up the off-ramp of the SF Bay Bridge to jump off. I lost more that day in unvested stock options than I will ever be worth.
So here I am. I’m broke and unemployed. My elderly parents are both tapped out and I need to be contributing several hundred a month to their care (which I don’t have). My prosthetic leg is failing (at least $5k) and I have a backlong of dental work ($2k plus).
What’s the point? The economy is doing little more than limping towards the vaguest idea of recovery. At this point I’d be lucky to find ANY job, much less something more than $10/hour.
I’m already one kind of statistic—an unemployed, middle-aged American begging to become an underemployed, underpaid worker. But I’m not that far from becoming another statistic.
I’m so tired. I’m tired of dealing with my father’s dementia. Yesterday he called the Ombudsman’s hotline because another resident in his facility pushed him into it. This woman is a busybody who tells everyone to call the hotline for the flimsiest of reasons—didn’t get a cookie at dinner—call the Ombudsman! I told him the previous evening when he called me that I would call him yesterday afternoon. When I didn’t, he picked up the phone. But he didn’t call me—he called the Ombudsman. His complaint is that he doesn’t get as much food on his plate as other people and his bath attendant doesn’t let him wash his feet. And he’s paranoid. Anything that goes wrong is the result of the staff retaliating (paranoia, anyone?). Mind you, he almost never tells me any of this while it’s happening, it’s usually weeks, or even months, after the fact.
What’s the point? What is out there for workers over 50 like me? Even if I survive the next 12 years to Social Security, what kind of subsistence will that be?
I’m a child of the late 50s and early 60s. Remember the Sherman Brothers song from Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress ride: “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”. Or Red, from That ‘70s Show: “I was promised a Hover Car. I WANT my Hover Car!”
I’m so tired. Decades of depression wears a body down. I’ve picked myself up so many times, I’m worn out. I’ve been playing in overtime for 11 years. I don’t even have anything to contribute here at DKos other than being snarky and disagreeable. Oh, don’t worry, you’re not going to get a GBCW diary from me this week. But I’m running out of steam. Gawd I wish someone would throw me a birther to eviscerate—I need some fun!
Radio HomoGee will likely be going silent on July 1—my 1999 Nissan doesn’t have WiFi.