{This is going to be longer than I expected. I guess I can add a tl;dr at the end. I also apologize if this ends up reading like a blog or something...this is an internal monologue that's been going through my head for at least 5 months now, and it needed to be vented. rather than just post my misery on a blogging site I figured I'd post it here...you guys all seem to offer great advice, and right now I need all the help I can get. I realize I've made some stupid decisions...some REALLY. FUCKING. STUPID. decisions...I need help crawling back out of this hole I've dug myself and getting on my feet again. Some of the things I talk about might not be relevant, and I apologize in that case, but this is all stuff that I really needed to get off of my chest and this is the only outlet I have at the moment.}
I feel like I'm in a bad situation and I have no clue how to get out of it. I'm getting ulcers from the constant stress that's been going on for the last two or three years (they kind of run together for me now) and there are times that I just want to scream or cry or both.
Before all of this shit started I had plans to do something with my life. I was (and am still) going to college, getting straight A's and basically being happy with my lot in life. All that pretty much changed when my mom decided to move out of the house we'd lived in for 18 years or so to move in with a guy she'd just met to a town 50 miles away. At that point I still didn't have my drivers license...we were too poor to afford two cars and my mom was constantly working so I'd never have gotten a chance to drive hers anyway. Anyway, she gives me two weeks of warning that we're going to be moving out of the house that I'd lived my whole life in, then we move. There's a lot more to the story involving my mom's crazy ex boyfriend breaking into our house, leaving me threatening messages, etc. but I won't go into that unless someone specifically wants to know about it.
It doesn't dawn on me until we move there that she'd no longer be able to give me a ride to college, so I move in with my grandpa. I love my grandpa and all, but he runs a tighter shift than I'm used to. I could have lived with that but he started accusing me of stealing his zanax (which I didn't do. I smoke pot and drink recreationally...that's all) I had to find somewhere else to live, because I couldn't take that type of thing.
I guess at the point where we moved I should have been concentrating on getting my drivers license so I wouldnt have to be reliant on anyone, but you try telling me that 2 years ago and see where it gets you.
Anyway, I'd managed to tough out the semester I was in with my grandpa before my aunt and uncle offered to let me live in their basement. This was an ideal situation. They weren't even 5 miles away from the college I'm attending, and my aunt is an instructor there so I didn't have to worry about finding a way there. The only thing they asked in return for me living there was to pay them a small amount of "rent" that they would give back to me when I moved out, to help me toward getting an apartment of my own, and to help keep the house clean. Things were going good. I got my license, my great-grandma gave me my great-grandpa's old car (the thing hadn't been driven in close to 5 years).
Then my typical idiocy comes into play. I meet this girl and want to take her out. I'm broke and between paychecks so I ask my uncle if I can have some of the money I'd been entrusting to them to pay for a date. He says I can -- but I would have to move out then. I'd never been on a date before - never even had a girl look my way - so me, in all my testosterone induced brilliance, take him up on that offer. My mom had moved to a closer town without the dickwad guy that she had been living with, so I figured that I would just move back in with her.
Naturally, that didn't work out the way I had it planned at all. The drive was still too far for me to afford gas and car insurance both, and now I had the added financial strain of taking this girl out whenever possible. Long story short I move in with my grandparents, because my aunt and uncle were out of the picture again and my mom was too far away from my school to realistically stay there. My grandparents were the only option available to me at the time.
Fast forward a few months -- one of my friends from college asks me to split the rent on an apartment with him. This sounds ideal to me. It's almost as close to my school as my aunt and uncle's house was, I'm closer to my girlfriend, and the only person I have to put up with is the guy who I consider my best friend at the time (who is still a close friend). So I do that.
Then some stupid shit with my girlfriend happens, her grandparents go nazi on her and ground her from her car and phone for months at a time because she pissed them off once about something minor (I took her out for her birthday and she didn't tell them where she was going until after she'd already left school). I'm not getting into that whole bag of worms, but needless to say her grandparents added a lot of stress into our relationship. I think I'm madly in love with the girl, so when she suggests that we get a cell phone plan together I think it's a great fucking idea. When I mention it to my mom she says that if we add my brother to the plan she'll pay both of our shares, so it sounds like the thing to do.
BIG. FUCKING. MISTAKE.
My mom doesn't do shit like she said she would. I pay for my share of the bill whereas my brother goes and spends all of his money on pills and pot as soon as he gets it. As in within hours. Then, to top off all of my financial strain, my car's transmission dies.
My grandparents let me use their spare car (bless them) but its a bit of a gas hog. It comes to the point that I'm not making enough money to pay for rent, gas, and my cell phone bill all at once. So instead of getting off the cell phone plan, which I assume would have been the logical choice, I move out of the apartment, still owing a month's rent which I'm still not able to afford right now (around $300...more like $220 now), and back in with my grandparents. All the stupid shit goes on with the cell phone bill until my girlfriend decides to cancel my brothers line, which I can't blame her for. This pisses off my mom and my brother and my mom says she's gonna stop paying back what she owes from the past. She'd actually been helping out some in the last few months but I guess not, now. My girlfriend tells me that I owe for my brother's cancellation plan, my bill, and my brother's past unpaid bills.
I'm barely making enough money to afford gas to go to school and eat while I'm there.
To top everything off I get called into the financial aid office and get told that, while I'd turned in my forms on time, my mom didn't put her signature someplace in time and now I'm fucked out of about 700 dollars each semester, which I'm gonna have to pay out of my own pocket somehow.
My great-grandma decides to have a stroke, which fucks with my emotions in ways I'd never thought possible.
I'm so stressed financially and emotionally right now I literally feel like Atlas. I feel like a moocher for living with my grandparents for so long (going on half a year now...and another 4 months before this time). I realize that I don't love my girlfriend and want off of the cell phone plan and out of the relationship...I honestly have gotten to the point where I can't stand looking at either one of them.
I don't know what to do. I want to find another job to help pay off my debt, but I was lucky to get the job I have now. Jobs are hard to come by in my part of the world, unless you want to work 7 days a week at a factory or some shit like that. I'm not going to quit school; I'd sooner die than do that. I'm thinking of taking a semester off, though. My mom wants me to move back in with her but...I dunno...she's been a deciding factor in a lot of my current problems and I'm not sure I wanna go that whole route now.
So...advice, please. Any and all advice. I realize I've made some idiotic decisions but the fact that they occurred is unchangeable. I need to know how I can get back on my feet and out of debt...and also how I can break up with my girlfriend who is madly in love with me and who I am massively in debt to.
TL;DR: I'm in debt up to my eyeballs and I haven't had a stable place to live in years; mostly my fault.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this.
Posts
Step 2: Tell (now) ex-girlfriend that you're out of the cellphone plan, and you are not responsible for the payments for your mother/brother. She can chase them for that, it's not your problem. Do not let crying and/or threats sway you - these payments are not your responsibility.
Step 3: Take a semester off school. You're not quitting, but I think you need to take some time to sort yourself out and work full time for a couple of months to get these debts out of your way. Take any old crap job, preferably near home, it will only be for a couple of months. Do not spend money on anything non-essential, and pack yourself a nice little nest egg.
Step 4: Assuming you can find a job near home, leave your car idle for a few months until you can get yourself sorted out financially. Then either get it fixed, or sell it and get another one which won't crap out on you at the drop of a hat.
Step 5: Find yourself a relatively stable place to live, preferably away from your erratic family. Trusted friends would be good.
Step 6: Stop trusting your family. I know you love them, but it seems you can't quite trust them. Distance yourself somewhat from your crap, and you can probably prevent complications like this in future.
Step 7: Profit.
Seriously, even if you don't follow the stuff above, just sit down in a quiet room for an afternoon, separate all this stuff out in your mind, and move one step at a time. Do the easy things first (not that I think dumping your girlfriend will be easy), take the smallest steps first, but start making progress forwards. It seems like a large complicated mess at the moment, but just mentally separate it out into a series of smaller messes, and sort them out one at a time.
Krysanthemum's advice sounds good to me...individual small steps rather than everything all at once.
I'm just really disappointed in myself for being so stupid. I went from being a straight A student to getting three Fs and a C last semester.
The more thieves and robbers there will be.
-Lao-tzu
The more thieves and robbers there will be.
-Lao-tzu
This is a good call. I love my parents, and I can still rely on my dad for some help, but honestly when it comes to dealing with a lot of stuff I don't go to them for help. I've found that most of the times that I talk to my mother about things she tries to take over and ends up insulting my intelligence.
This doesn't mean I don't talk to them. It doesn't mean I don't tell them what's going on in my life. I do, for example, refrain from telling them about the identity theft issues I'm having right now. It may mean that I'm not as close to my parents as other people may be, or it may not be the fairy tale family that I may want, but there's a lot of stress and crap that I don't have to deal with now.