Been there, Done that, got the t-shirt, and you can have it (the t-shirt, I mean), Monica Bielanko.

If we're discussing full-disclosure financial statuses, boy have I got some dirty laundry to air. I have been lying awake at night imagining how the fall out will look. Will I be evicted from the house because I couldn't come up with my rent first? Or will that come after the repossession of the used Tahoe that I obviosuly couldn't afford in the first place. Will I make just enough money that we won't qualify for foodstamps, right at the moment that the father of my children loses his job and I suddenly am back to absolutely NO child support, not even the meager offerings that have been trickling in? Even after I sell my entire psuedo designer wardrobe on ebay, quit buying even cheap wine (I love you, Our Daily Red),  and return to bumming the occasional cigarette that I don't finish instead of buying a whole pack to get stale while I spend my sober moments staring at them and remembering that I don't even like to smoke, even then, I can't imagine how we can avoid being homeless, carless and running from the collectors that I am friends with on a first name basis now.

This is how bad it is, but it has been worse. It has been worse to the extent that in a preemptive move to avoid eviction, single mother me and my four gloriously entertaining daughters and obese hound moved in with my parents. It made sense. It was the right and logical thing to do. And it was just a couple months. Just til the girls were out of school and I got a fire dispatch that could get me back on my feet and pay rent somewhere. Anywhere. A fire dispatch that never came. The months of cohabitation rolled by, with some ethereal hand of grace over them. Blowups were at a lifetime low when they should have climaxed as the rolling ball of chaos that is me and my life collided with perfect structure and harmony and a fierce grip on tradition and order that was my mom. The whole thing went well, overall, really, other than the fact that I never had a fire, or job, or a life. I had facebook. I had truck the dog. But then I realized that facebook was just a flood of familial farmtown updates so I decided, unwisely, to "unfriend" most of my family members. Including the ones I was living with. All hell broke loose. I had suddenly become the jagged blade of soul destruction to my mother, my sister, my cousins and aunt, who incidentally didn't remember we were friends on facebook until someone told them that I had unfriended them. I just wanted a quiet little virtual world of my own. A place to have friends that I was not related to, where I could use cuss words and not get the cold shoulder for a week. As it happened, facebook suddenly became as quiet as the dinner table every night while my family nursed their broken hearts and I wallowed in my vileness. And that's when I discovered that I actually didn't have a life. Other than that family. I didn't have the friends I fantasized about, friends that I could cuss at. They were as far away in cyberspace as they were in real life. They had lives. People, places to go. Jobs. Jobs? What the hell is that? Who works anymore? So I closed my facebook account. For about 15 minutes. Then I got bored. How the hell did I get so far off track? I was talking about finances and here I am rambling on about the bain of facebook. Dammit.

Back to finances. Moving in with mom and dad didn't help much, since the income that wasn't paying the bills became the non-existant income that meant I was living on credit cards with exorbitant interest rates whenever I was too proud to simply ask mom and dad for money. When the credit cards were maxed, and here, I will own, partially due to the bad spending habits I did not curb, I finally had to humble myself and beg my parents for money. Obviously this was only after I had begged the love of my life (NOT) ex-husband to pay any kind of child support.  Child support was about as forth-coming as the ex-husband, and so after seven months of mooching off of my generous and frazzled parents, I got a call from my old boss in Northport and an offer to come back and work at the hardware store. His wife of 28 years had just left him alone to care for their 22 year old autistic daughter. I love Dan, and jumped at the chance to work, especially for such a great family. If I had known that he had not-so-secret plans to woo and bed me, there is definitely a chance I would not have moved back to hell's asshole, but in my ignorant bliss I charged blindly across the pass with two uHaul trailers and four disgruntled children who didn't understand why we couldn't live with grandpa and grandma forever. And again,  I am off track.

But we landed in Northport, with a sort of employment, $10 an hour part time at the store, plus some extra work cleaning houses, which I am apparently proficient at. For ten dollars an hour. So, with my maxed out credit cards, not enough income to pay the rent ($650 a month - half of anything I could find in Tumwater), or the car payment, or the insurance, or the credit card minimums, I have been barrelling ahead, robbing peter to pay paul, and here is where I stand, Monica Beilanko:

OutGo
Credit Cards: (at at least a 22% interest rate)    $19,707.10
Tahoe (again, a 22% interest rate)                    $ 10,000
Student Loans                                                  $ 25,066
mom and dad                                                    $ 1,400
rent                                                                    $650/month


InCome
Hardware store:          $225 weekly
Childsupport (maybe) $550 monthly
housecleaning             $40 weekly


this is after I got my $4500 tax return which bailed me out of some late car payments and overdue rent.

What happens next? Who knows. Right now it's just nip and tuck every week and I pray that somehow we will make it, push it off til next month. Pay $100 on a credit card and then have to use it for gas. I keep waiting for a windfall. Or a good job. Maybe when my perpetually elusive degree is done. They say those things help. My cousin has a degree in journalism. She's got a good job. at Anne Taylor. Maybe a good fire season. Maybe not. Maybe a sugar daddy who falls hopelessly in love with me and turns out NOT to be a psycho who holds me captive in developing countries and takes advantage of me. I don't really like being alone. I don't like shouldering the debt myself or trying to figure out how to keep my lips above water. But I am thankful for this moment, while the electricity is still on, the house is warm and we're all ok. I have a great life, if I can just figure out how to sustain it. Ok, staying out of the Buckle and off of websites sporting great deals on hoodies would definitely help. But there is this weird sense of Disney fueled entitlement that says I was born to look good, to feel good, to have good. Something internal that says I should have a fairy tale, not a crappy job and an empty bed at night. But then again, I don't want wrong, or bad, and even with the stress and the struggle, I am so divinely grateful to be on my own again, in my own space, without worrying about who's toothpaste I am using. In some ways, it's worth the 22% interest rate. Probably what I really need is somebody who is good at dealing with the sharks that are eating me alive to talk them down. Or something. But instead I have a hound dog, who is staring at me mournfully. and a ridiculous kitten playing with the hair on the back of my head. And I have toilets to scrub. One cannot truly know humility until they have scrubbed someone else's toilet for $10 an hour.

So yes, Monica, I have been there. I lived with my mom, and we somehow survived each other's ridiculousness and now I am back to me again, with my tribe. I am thankful for the process as it was, and now I have to dig the rest of the way out on my own. And what an adventure it will be. How's the black dress thing going?