Life. Isn’t. Freaking. Easy.
No one ever said it was, granted, but geez. These past few weeks have really made me rethink ever saying the words “it can’t get much worse” out loud ever again.
Forgive me in advance for this being one of those pathetic posts where I ramble on and on about how awful my life is. I’m not a teenage girl anymore, but man, the way things have been going, it’s almost comical how bad things got for awhile.
I’ll start with the first reason–the reason that several other things went to sh*t: my job.
My job has been incredibly difficult lately.
I know I should be thankful in this economy for even having a job, as distasteful as it is. I know that. And sometimes, I am thankful. But my job has been incredibly stressful lately, and coupled with the fact that I can’t seem to get a call back from any of the numerous resumes I’ve sent out in my search for new employment, it’s very disheartening. I don’t want to add any more details here, but rest assured, this is not just a restlessness for “something better” or lack of a decent work ethic. I’ve been looking for a new job for months now, and with every day that passes and I don’t get a phone call for an interview, or an email telling me what my next step is in the application process…it’s very disheartening, and I’ve found myself shrinking into a haze of despondency with a feeling like I’m trapped. Not a good combination.
That’s been the most lengthy issue so far, which sent another thing spiraling into oblivion.
My relationship.
Andy and I broke up a few weeks ago. It was a bad breakup, things were said (or weren’t said) that made us both bitter and upset. Andy wasn’t making enough money to pay his half of the bills in our apartment, and I’d been supporting the both of us for about eight months. With the stress of my job and my finances, along with a boyfriend who just couldn’t seem to scrape up $375 for his half of the rent, I snapped. There were other issues there too, but our financial status was the worst one. It broke my heart to leave him, but I couldn’t stay with someone who couldn’t seem to get his own finances in order, and I couldn’t justify staying in a relationship where I had to be the financial, emotional, and psychological supporter. I told him to have his things moved out of the apartment by the time I got back, and I fled, minutes after our breakup, to spend a few days with my family. I called in to work, stating a family emergency (I couldn’t even imagine trying to be at the office with this on my mind) and spent the next four days in an alcohol/nicotine/depression fueled haze. I might have stayed longer, except at that point it hurt me worse to be away from my own city and my things, not to mention I couldn’t abandon my job for that long (I’m a faithful employee even when I hate to be), so I headed back home on Tuesday afternoon. Not only did I get caught in big city five o’clock traffic, a torrential thunderstorm hit the city right as five o’clock traffic hit, and I was stuck in traffic about forty-five minutes away from my family. I was sitting for two hours, while thunder and lightning crashed around me, in an unfamiliar city, with two terrified dogs in the backseat. I did finally make it home, shaken, but alive, and walked in to an empty apartment. Just like I wanted.
It was probably seeing all of his things gone that undid me. Being together for nearly two years and living together for almost a year of that will do that to a person. Really, he was the only source of human contact I had, considering the atmosphere at my job, and now even that was gone.
He and I are on speaking terms again now, which is good, we’ve had dinner a few times, and have tried to puzzle out why our relationship didn’t work, and if maybe in the future it could work again. We just don’t know at this point. I do know that every time I go home and he’s not there, it makes my whole body ache in a way that makes me understand that heartbreak is not entirely a metaphorical term. I miss him.
The day after I got home, I got sick. I was planning on going back to work, and I managed to get there on Thursday, but by the time noon hit, I was running a 101 degree fever and had to go to the doctor. I stayed in bed for two more days. We think I might have had a touch of West Nile virus. Amazing, right? Either that or my immune system was so battered from the stress of the last weeks that it finally went into overdrive and I went down, hard.
The weekend passed in a kind of haze (I know I’m using that word a lot, but I can’t think of another good way to describe it). Jake and Bear, to their credit, were fairly well-behaved, but considering the stupor I was in, they could have been messing in the house, ransacking the pantry, and taking my car for joy rides for all I know.
I made it back to work on Monday, exhausted but feeling better (healthwise). That day at work was hellish. Because of the week that I’d missed, all of my work had piled up and I wasn’t even sure where to start. Somehow I made it through the day and made it home, still exhausted.
I woke up the next morning, a little late, and hurried down the stairs of my apartment to go to work and try to make it there somewhat on time. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. I was sure I had parked my car four spaces from the stairs, right under the window of my apartment. I figuratively scratched my head, wondering if maybe during the “haze,” I had parked it somewhere else, on the opposite side of the stairs, perhaps. I traversed the parking lot with no luck and realized, finally, that the only other reason it wasn’t where I’d parked it was because it had been stolen.
Yes, on top of a bad breakup, bad job, and bad health, the one thing that I could rely on with some certainty had now mysteriously vanished. I could only stand there in stunned silence, because it wasn’t possible that life could be this bad. It wasn’t possible that some random act of crime had happened to me, right when the rest of my life was falling apart.
But it had. I was later described as “nearly hysterical” when I called first my parents, and then Andy to tell them what had happened. Andy got to me first. My parents live thirty minutes away, and my dad had just gotten to work. I couldn’t resist calling Andy, he had rescued me from car situations before, and despite our current status, he came to be there with me while the cops were called, and I tried to field my insurance company’s questions with answers like “it’s just gone!” He drove me to the rental place after the police left and my insurance had arranged for a car for me, and reassured me that if I needed anything I could call him.
It seems like that was the run of bad luck I was experiencing, and I laughed (hysterically) later to my mom that unless I found out I was terminally ill or my apartment burned down around me, it really couldn’t get much worse.
It’s been over a week, still no sign of my car. So here’s my dilemma now.
My insurance company is forwarding the claim to the total loss department, so I should be hearing from them later this week about what needs to be done to get me a settlement check. I’m really concerned though, because the car wasn’t worth a whole lot as it was, and I’ve heard horror stories about claims taking months to get settled, and even then, the settlement check doesn’t cover the loan on the car etc and so forth. Since my car, from a dealer, would be worth about $4600, but from a private party could be as low as $2600, that’s a large margin for a settlement check. My loan is still about $3100, plus my deductible, so I need to get a check around $4000 so I can pay off my loan, my deductible, and still have a little bit of money to put towards a down payment on a new car. My insurance company valued the car originally around $4600, so I’m hoping they’ll give me at least $4000 since I’ve only had it for a year and a half (and according to my dad, older cars depreciate slower than new cars). They told me that after I get the check I’ll only have a few days to give the rental back, so that’s more stress because I have to wait and see what my settlement check is before I can even start seriously looking at cars. That gives me just days to get another car lined up, and bought. My dad said he thought that was fair, and I said “Yeah, it’ll be fair if they give me enough to cover my loan and the deductible! Otherwise, they’re leaving me without a vehicle!”
I’ve been told to just wait and see, I should be hearing from my insurance company within 24 hours, all that stuff. I’m still job hunting, driving a borrowed car, and going home to an empty apartment every night.
I guess that’s my sob story for today. Jake and Bear are doing well, Jake is 99% potty trained now, and has learned that he’s big enough to jump up on the couch now, which is frustrating because I’m trying to teach him that’s not okay. He tends to pee a little when he gets really excited (whether he’s been outside or not), but I can’t exactly fault him for that, because Bear used to do the same thing. He’ll probably do it for at least another six months, if not longer. I’m planning on getting him neutered next month (if I’m not bankrupt from my car loan first), and that will hopefully help a little bit with his stubborn willfulness, though I know that’s just a typical Corgi trait. 🙂
Hopefully my next post will be a little more uplifting and optimistic than this one has been.
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