I can’t take anymore

I’m done. Nothing I do is ever enough, and it never will be. My entire life has been one big failure after another, and I am so tired of trying.

Funny thing is, if you saw me on the street, you’d never know my life is a living hell. I’m “happy.” People are forever telling me how “strong” I am, blah blah blah, but I’m NOT. I just put on a good face. I go through the motions of daily life, but inside, I’m screaming.

Why do I want to die? Ha! Take your pick of reasons-I’ve got plenty of ’em! Let’s start with a little history, though.

My folks got divorced when I was nine. I was actually relieved-my mother was a raging crazy *****, and she was all too happy to leave us kids behind. My sister “Ann” was broken up about it, but then again, she could get emotional about a song dropping off the Top 40, lol. My oldest sister, “Toni,” decided that it was her job to “take over where Mom left off.” Yeah…that didn’t work out so well. Rather bizarre, to be honest-she turned into a narcissist almost overnight. Guess who her favorite target was? Yep-that would be me. Toni absolutely could not allow me to be “better” at anything than she was, and so spent the next few years making damn sure I knew I was useless, ugly, untalented, stupid, etc, etc, ad nauseam.

Dad was always at work. Not his fault-he was trying to raise three kids with no child support. When he was home, he was really the most awesome father a kid could ever want. No complaints there, except that I couldn’t really talk to Dad. Again, though, not his fault-I couldn’t really talk to ANYBODY. Oh, well.

So, anyway…at age eleven, I was molested by my 28 year old half brother. Couldn’t tell Dad, because Dad would have killed him and gone to prison for it. Couldn’t tell anybody, because I didn’t want to be taken from my dad, and that’s exactly what would have happened-we lived in a very backwards place, where a single father raising three girls was automatically a bad person. So I kept my mouth shut. The abuse continued for about a year, until I finally got ballsy enough to fight back. I woke my half brother up in the middle of the night with a razor sharp knife laid across his prick and told him if he ever so much as looked at me again, I’d cut it off. He believed me, apparently.

During all this time, I should point out, I had no friends. None. Not even one. We were dirt poor, and even our relatives despised us. You know the type of people who hate you because you wear the wrong shoes? Yeah, I got a whole family full of those. Add in that we weren’t religious, racist, or homophobic, and you’ve got yourself a family of outcasts. God, growing up was so much fun!

Anyway…my sisters bailed out on Dad when I was twelve, and went to go live with Mom. I tried living with Mom, too-I dunno, I just felt like I should give her a chance. I lasted about six months with her, and couldn’t do it. I’m sorry, I’m just really not that goddamn shallow. Mom’s idea of “being a good mother” was to try to buy me off, bribe me with stuff, etc. “If you do such-&-such, I’ll take you to the mall.” No, thanks.

I moved back with Dad. He had a stroke, and had to quit working. He had another stroke about a year later, when I was fourteen. I managed to convince the school board to allow me to test out so I could go to work and take care of Dad. From the age of fourteen on up, I was Dad’s ONLY caretaker. I took him to doctors’ appointments and check-ups, Social Security hearings, the whole nine yards. I managed the household budget, kept up the housework, cooked his meals and washed his clothes and forced him to take baths and everything else. I sat in the hospital with him all night when he was sick, and went to work the next day.

I’m not complaining about that part of my life. I wouldn’t trade a minute of that time for anything. But it put me in a perfect position to be victimized again, and sure as shit, I was. At eighteen, I hooked up with what I thought was a decent guy. HA!!! He was a complete psychopath. Too bad I didn’t realize that until I was already pregnant. His favorite torture method for me was to keep me locked in the bedroom and taunt me by telling me how hungry my dad must be getting since he couldn’t cook for himself. He also liked to tell me that if I miscarried or had an abortion or gave the kid up for adoption, he’d kill Dad. I believed him. I was forced to give birth to a child I didn’t want, and then forced to stay with a raging lunatic who liked to detail all the new and amusing ways he could kill the baby and make it look like an accident, or, better yet, my fault.

Dad had a heart attack one morning after walking to the bank on his own (five miles). A cop showed up and told me about it. I saw a chance to get out without my crazy boyfriend being able to stop me, and I took it. I rode up to Lexington in the back of an ambulance with nothing but the clothes on my back and five bucks in my pocket, planning to somehow go back and rescue the baby. In three days, though,my ex had filed for custody of the baby saying I abandoned him with no food, no clothes, etc. I really should have known he’d pull a stunt like that.

In a couple of weeks, I had an apartment and a job, and got a letter in the mail saying I needed to pay child support. A couple of days after that, I got another letter, saying my child was dead. My ex wouldn’t tell me anything-not even where he was buried.

Fast forward a bit. I met my husband at work, got married, had a daughter. Dad died when I was 22. I managed to cope, I think. Neither of my sisters even bothered to send a card, but I was used to that kind of crap by then.

We had a reasonably normal life for a while. When my daughter was seven, we had another child, a little boy. At the same time, my husband lost the use of his hands. No idea what happened-he simply couldn’t grasp things or hold anything that weighed more than a couple of ounces. So, there went his job, our health insurance, and our home. Poof. Three months after my son was born, we were homeless and couchsurfing.

It’s been one thing after another pretty much since then. My son is autistic. We got a new place, and three months later, a gas pipe exploded and we lost everything. We struggled back from that disaster, only to get hit with another, and another, and another. We bought a house, and then our car broke down and we couldn’t get to work. No job, no house. It’s been crazy. My daughter was being bullied so badly in school, we decided to homeschool her and my son. That worked great, until we lost the house and ended up moving back “home” to Lexington. Lo and behold, during the rush to secure housing again and find jobs and everything else, we screwed up the kids’ paperwork.  We also got screwed three more times on housing-twice by “friends” who wanted us as roomies, and once by a sociopathic landlady. The next thing we know, we’re in court for educational and medical neglect, our kids end up with relatives, and now on top of trying to scratch and claw our way back on our feet, we’re fighting CPS, too.

So, here I am. I just found out today that we’re not able to pay the rent. Keeping a place to live is part of our “case plan” with CPS to get our kids back, so if we lose our place, we lose our rights to our kids. We have a home inspection tomorrow morning, and because we don’t have a car and my husband’s job is thirty miles away, my husband may not make it here i time-another strike against our chances of getting our kids back. But the final straw is that I just found out that my first child not only isn’t dead, I owe sixteen years’ worth of child support for him. I’m probably going to prison. There’s no way my family will ever be together again. We’ve done EVERYTHING we’ve been asked to do, but none of it matters. I give up. I’m done. My kids will never get to come home. My husband will be better off without me. I can’t think of a single thing I have to look forward to except more damn bad luck.

I don’t know if I’m gonna off myself. Hell, I’m too broke to buy a gun, and I can’t even afford a bottle of sleeping pills. I could just wait and die naturally anyway-I’ve got a pretty good reason to believe I have cancer now, on top of everything else. So, here I am. Waiting to see what tomorrow brings, and trying to decide if I should just end it. I mean, really, how much MORE am I supposed to take?