I would love to go to bed @ night not consumed by worry over bills or if I would be able to get groceries that week. I can still remember not knowing or fearing a shut-off notice. We live in the snowbelt but we went without a heat source or hot water until the end of December. My girls do not deserve to go to bed hungry, or worry that we won't have a place to live. They do without so much & it makes me feel like such a huge failure!!! I had worked most of my life, from milking cows & pitching manure starting at the age of 10, to a part-time after school job at 16. I have absolutely no problem with earning my keep, but between the recurrent cancer & the economy I cannot find any kind of employment. And yet to add insult to injury I have tried for & failed several times to secure social security disability. I live with severe pain, ever minute of everyday. I just want a break, my own birth mother charged me for gas every time she took me in for a cancer treatment. The warranty had just expired on my Ford Contour, I had kept every appointment at my certified Ford dealership yet one day driving home from a radiation treatment it just quit. The mechanic told me that if the 1st certified garage had actually fixed a problem the car had a few weeks before instead of just throwing a band-aid on it, this problem wouldn't have happened. At less than 60,000 miles the engine was done for & the mechanic would not repeat his statement or help me in any way. The thing is that there is always something like this happening to me, at some point I used to think, it would end & every now & then something good would happen to me & my girls... but as of yet that is not to be. I thank God for my girls & I thank God that I'm doing so well against my cancer but it sure would be nice to be able to breathe, to not always be worrying about bills & groceries or God forbid one of them get sick, I have had to make them walk to the Dr.'s office in a foot or more of snow in sub-zero temperatures because one of them had severe bronchitis, even though their grandmother lives less than 4 miles away. That is probably the hardest part for me, why we just don't matter to anyone in my family or anyone in their father's family. I swear we are really good people & I've taught my girls not to treat people badly no matter what, I've taught them that even the poorest person can help their fellow man, and I practice what I preach because I believe children learn by doing. So it's hard for them to understand how we can be so badly in need yet our own family won't even lend a hand.
