This is what it looks like, in slow motion. This is the unravelling. This is the end of a families dreams for the future, for its aspirations and for its plans. This is the beginning and the end right here. Don’t let your guard down, don’t ever think you are safe, that your future is all set. Don’t plan to pay for your kids college, to travel when you retire. Don’t plan to stay healthy, and don’t expect to take care of yourself when you get sick. Don’t expect to have a roof over your head. If you already have one, don’t expect it to stay. For the love of god, don’t ever expect any sort of security or dignity. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, how badly you want to work, how many letters you have after your name.
It doesn’t matter if you went to a good school, come from a good family. It doesn’t even matter if you’re in good financial shape with no debt and never even got swindled by a crappy mortgage high interest rate cards. You can be sitting there with all your ducks in a row, heat turned all the way up to 68 and before you know it, one little shift in the universe will send you and the people you love most into a tail spin. You will slowly start hurtling towards earth, faster. And faster. And you will cling to anything you can find, even as you stop being able to feel. Anything.
Don’t think a handshake means anything to anyone anymore. Don’t ever think that someones promises hold any weight. Don’t expect that your hard work will ever pay off. And don’t think you can run. You will be pinned down, forced to live through it. You will be forced every night to lay awake and think about where you can get food, money, security. You will get really good at doing math in your head on the fly, and you will also learn that people are selfish by nature and largely don’t really care about you or your kids. You will feel yourself being observed and discussed. You will find yourself marked as Other, so that people who are just like you used to be don’t have to feel what you’re feeling. The betrayal, the promises that you stupidly believed in. The phone will stop ringing soon. You know people get uncomfortable when you talk about it. You know people stop caring, lose sympathy. Your friends will start dropping like flies.
I don’t think about Next Year, or In Ten Years. I can barely think about next week. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know how I’m going to stay in my house, how I’m going to feed us, how the hell I’m going to pay for heat this winter, how I’m going to pay for the Halloween costumes I just ordered two nights ago thinking that there was a job that was going to start this week. Silly me, apparently deciding terms of employment and negotiating a salary and shaking hands is meaningless.
We are good people. We work hard and save money and invest in the market. We give to charity and volunteer. We bring casseroles to people when they are sick, or have a baby. We are good tippers. We have never carried debt aside from student loans and mortgage, both of which we watch closely and refinance at low rates. We overpay our bills to get ahead. Our cars both have 130K miles and are 8 years old, and we are perfectly ok with that. We don’t have iPads. We own one TV. We haven’t taken a vacation in years. We wear hand me downs and clip coupons. I don’t know what we did to deserve this. I don’t know how many more times I can handle my daughter asking me if I’m crying because I’m mad at her. All of the clichés about something better around the corner, and windows and doors opening and closing, just sound like cruel, horrid jokes now so please spare me that. We are the 99%. We are also the 47% for the first time in our lives.
So, here is your front row ticket. Now you can observe from a safe distance what it looks like when a family falls apart. Enjoy the show.
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 18, 2011 at 1:57 am
Kerry
why on earth would anyone turn away from you at this point? I don’t get that.
October 18, 2011 at 6:35 am
Tasha
I am so sorry for everything you are going through. Although we are not quite where your family is yet, we are headed down the same spiral, I fear. The last two years have completely changed how I see this country and the reality of how people get overwhelmed, and how near-impossible it is to get off the slippery slope once you’re on it. I send you all I can, which is my best wishes for your future.
October 26, 2011 at 3:41 am
Jenny
Oh Amanda, I wish I could give you a big hug right now. I’ve come to your blog for a stock recipe and find myself tight-chested with frozen anxiety after reading these other posts. You write very well, and I’ve been captivated by your story, you should consider writing a book about what so much of the country is going through. You are putting a real story and real people behind a lot of statistics and maybe if you keep writing about it you can help the powers-that-be see the true trauma many families like yours are suffering through. Maybe that’s silly but just a thought. At the very least, know there is one girl in Colorado thinking about you and wishing you and your family the best.
November 3, 2011 at 8:22 am
Martha
Yours is the story of so very many good people and of so many not so good people too. I do agree with Jenny. Hope you have the energy to track down some literary agents. You and your family will be in my thoughts and prayers.
I keep a post on my desk: if we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.
There are days when I read this and think that this is BS; I have lived long enough to “read the signs” and am smart enough to predict how much harder still my life will become; Other days I see this as wondrously wise. My trials are financial and relational and due to significant illness, most days are filled with physical pain. I am no Pollyanna to tough stuff. Every day I get up, just get up and that is indeed a sign that I will stay the course and find the blessings in my day. Martha Perry