i couldn't find a community geared towards venting or posting about depression, so i'm coming here to empty my head. sorry in advance if this doesn't fit the comm well. if you're sensitive to depression i'd avoid my post tbh.
it took me two months to find a job since my last one ended in October. my bills became unmanageable during that time and my phone was shut off. yesterday, on my first day of work, my car was repossessed after i got home. i live with my partner and his mother and they fought about me the other day. i came home early today from work and got into a yelling match with my partner over something stupid. we have been together for 13 years. we know there will be bad and good times, but lately it's been nothing but bad, and i am the cause of a good percentage of it.
i have several mental illnesses that make it difficult for me to maintain support for myself. i am medicated and have been in and out of therapy. i've even been hospitalized for suicidal ideation. i am trying, i really am. i don't know how to balance the love i feel for my partner and "being responsible" financially. we are supposed to focus on expenses and bills first, but i cannot simply exist to work. that isn't life, that isn't living, i'd rather be dead. i will only get one life to live and i am spending it concerned about money and successfully navigating a capitalist hellhole. yes, sometimes i buy my boyfriend and i shit we don't need, but it's because we get to experience each other genuinely when we come together and do or use whatever i bought for us. i am creating memories, i am creating happiness.. but yes, it is at the expense of money and "good" decision making. poor people are allowed to enjoy life too.
but.. i don't know if my boyfriend sees it that way. he's told me that he cares more about being financially stable and secure, but the smile on his face when i get him something he wanted or i pick up some weed for us to relax together and smoke tells me that he needs a release too. he feels pressured to conform to the world around him, but he is also extremely disgusted by our world in much the same way i am.
idk. i have felt like a leech and a failure my whole life, and now i have lost my phone and my car, and have no money until my first check. i spent what i had on gas for a car that was taken from me lol. now i'm sitting here broke and without much of anything, and my boyfriend and his mother seem to think poor of me as of late.
i'm tried. i really am exhausted. if i don't wake up tomorrow the world would be doing me a favor. i have begged to die in my sleep before only to unfortunately wake up and be forced to exist yet again. maybe tonight will be different.
I'm so sorry you're experiencing this, comrade. My wife has spent most of the last year unable to get stable full time work due to a long term health issue finally getting so bad that they'd give her the surgery to correct it (a surgery we've been trying to find someone who would agree to do for nearly 8 years at that point). Because every doctor before missed it, it got so bad that the recovery took MUCH longer than it otherwise would have. She has lost multiple jobs in the last 8 years and we've always been one step forward and then it was a coin flip on if we'd take one or multiple steps backwards. Just this week she finally started being able to get work daily and I can attest that financial stability can be a huge stressor. The only reason we survived is that my adult son was able to set aside his own wants and desires for the last year and see that it was cheaper to contribute the majority of his income to household bills than it was to find a place of his own in an area so expensive as ours. It will probably take years to pay him back but I couldn't be more grateful.
Now that I trauma dumped my back story, I do so to say I understand both you and your partner's point of view on this issue. In a just society, this type of issues would not be occurring, because your basic needs would be taken care of, all of our collective basic needs would be addressed. Sadly, we don't live in that type of society.
The best advice I can give, is to make a budget based on your current income. You won't budget your way out of poverty but you are not wrong that even if you're broke, you need at least SOME small thing to keep you sane, budget for that. Set a limit on how much you can spend on those little smile things and spend the rest focusing on getting things straightened out financially. Look and see if there are any better paying jobs available or old things you aren't using that you could sell for a few extra bucks. (I recently went through my accumulated things I bought when money wasn't tight and sold off some electronics I wasn't using, it was how I made it through December without missing any bills.
Life can get better, but it will take a LOT of luck and you will have to push through a lot of hard days to get there. Hang in there, comrade is you've got this. (also, if you're in dire straights, you can always request help in the mutual aid community on lemmygrad or hexbear (I don't remember the exact spot currently))
thank you for commiserating. i am sorry you can relate. it seems a lot of us can. yes, budgeting is our next step actually. we are doing it together with my first paycheck.
edit: i already posted on mutualaid a few days ago lol i would feel scummy and abusive if i posted again so soon, but i appreciate the tip
Yeah, I don't know what the rules are on mutualaid, I've never quite hit the point where I absolutely needed it, though I've been close. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it if you didn't yet know about it. Good luck, comrade.