I just ate a yogurt thinking it might perk me up a bit and give me some energy. Instead, I felt like I was going to puke, so I took a Tums. Oh, and I just had my fourth bout of the runs. Tom’s gonna pick me up some anti-run stuff tomorrow. And this is the chicken shit wimp that God thinks could handle the streets? He knows I can’t, though, and won’t even attempt to try. That’s no life for Tom and I. But that’s the whole idea; God wanted to give us something He knew damn well we couldn’t handle so it would drive us to suicide. It all makes sense except for the part about why. Why did He hate us so damn much? I always knew He did, but not even I thought He hated us this much. I knew He got off on teasing us with our survival, but this literally putting that survival on the line and walking us into a sure dead-end is totally new. There is simply no one that can help us. Everyone we know is either broke themselves or wouldn’t help us even if they could. And not many people could afford to pay our $825 rent. My sister said to let her know if we needed help but she’s broke and on disability and so I think paying our expenses for half a year would be a bit over her head. I don’t know that even my parents could afford it. I doubt it. Even if they could, what kind of a life would we have? As I’ve already been over a million times, a lifetime of struggling in tiny old rentals would be all we’d have to look forward to in life. Not much fun by most people’s standards and neither would the streets have been any fun till they killed us. So PLEASE, PLEASE remember that if you feel sad and like crying for us. Yes, those of you who are my closest friends and family will hurt for a while but think of how WE would have hurt and how badly WE would have suffered on the streets. It’s important you remember this! It’s ok to be sad or to be angry at God and the government, but as they say, shit happens. And life isn’t fair. We were just one of those who got an extra dose of God’s hatred and the government’s abuse. Life was beyond unfair for us. Had we been lazy drunks or druggies, then a life as bums would be exactly what we deserved. Instead, we got all the wrong results for all the right actions. Now dry your tears and move on.

I wanted to live and be happy, but that wasn’t an option. I also don’t expect anyone to get it that hasn’t been faced with homelessness and hopelessness like we are. I still can’t get Tom’s words outa my head as soon as he came back from the mail place.

“You were right, no more Unemployment checks.”

And then I slept horribly. No sooner would I drift off to sleep when those direct, to-the-point words of doom would wake me up.

“You were right, no more Unemployment checks.”

Random thoughts go through my mind as I write this. And pointless ones. Like who will discover us and who will contact my family? I mean Jesse will discover us, of course, but who will break the bad news to my folks? I just hope they understand why we had to go! First God didn’t want us to have a nice place to live, now He doesn’t want us to have any place to live.

It’s scary knowing you’re going to die even though you want to because you know you couldn’t survive the streets. Yet Tom is handling it so well and so calmly.

Later…

Took a nap for a few hours. I actually slept more soundly than I did yesterday morning when Tom came back with the latest blow to our sorry existence and informed us that yes, our lovely government really can and does let tons of people starve on the streets. We’re just not as important as those foreigners, some of whom like to attack us.

Wish I could sleep the rest of the days away. Sleep is my only escape for when I’m awake my mind simply tortures the hell out of me. I tell myself not to worry and that we won’t suffer any more than we have in the past and will lose consciousness within an hour. Then there won’t be anything and I’ll sink into a big black hole of nothing because the brain, which we need to think, feel, sense or have any awareness at all, will be wonderfully dead.

Yet I still tremble with fear.

I was looking at our wedding pictures and sadly shaking my head. Who’d have known that 19 years later we might be killing ourselves together? starts crying It’s just really fucked up that we came to Cali to better our lives just to be planning on dying. How ironic that the state I grew up dreaming about living in is about to kill us.

Later…

I had been writing privately offline, not wanting to alarm anyone over my situation, but then I decided I guess I could talk a little more about what’s going on since we’re either going to sink or swim at this point. I may still post some of those private entries at a later date.

It happened last Saturday. Tom was out getting groceries and picking up the mail. I was home alone and it was toward the end of my day. I was going to crash shortly after he got back. When he didn’t get the Unemployment forms he would fill out and submit every other Sunday, we knew something was up. We just didn’t think it would get this extreme. Really, not even I thought anything up there hated us this much. But still, I had a bad feeling and had been saying to Tom that I feared we were doomed and may be going out of here in body bags instead of all psyched to get to Florida or even to cold, snowy Nebraska which I would hate but that would have more job opportunities.

And then Tom came home. I started throwing things in the freezer and then he said, “You were right, no more Unemployment.”

Yeah, you read this correctly. It turns out we’re not qualified for the next extension. The one from October to April. I stood there stunned and sick to my stomach to think that our fucking government could readily hand over billions of dollars to other countries but not give a damn about its own. Yes, our government really is that heartless to have absolutely NO problem with letting so many people just starve off in the streets. I was angry, sad and terrified and I had the runs and damn near puked my guts out. I couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time before the stress and fear would wake me up and Tom’s words of impending doom. I thought for sure we were dead since the streets are simply NO option for us. We all have our limits and that would certainly be one of mine. So now it’s in the hands of fate. We either kill ourselves to avoid a slow miserable death on the streets if no one gives him a job before the last of our money runs out, or we end up saved by a job along with the much-appreciated but unexpected help from Eileen and our eBay sales. We have a chance to be “saved” tomorrow at 4pm when Tom goes for a group interview at Toys R Us. This would just be a part-time seasonal job throughout the holidays, but it would be enough to save us if we’re meant to live.

Do I want to live? Well, yes and no. There is both good and bad to life and living. There are enough things I would no longer have to be burdened by if I were dead and no longer had to deal with them. But I would miss my friends and family and doing the things I love to do with writing in this journal being one of them.

Alison, Maliheh and the diary guy have offered words of encouragement which I so do appreciate. Really, they put a smile on my face and made me wish I could reach through my monitor and hug them all. But we’re not officially out of the woods yet and there are no guarantees we ever will be. We’ve got about 2-6 weeks to find out.

Meanwhile, I had mixed emotions in learning Eileen was sending us something. I appreciate the hell out of her for it, but I probably wouldn’t have mentioned our situation if I’d known she was gonna jump in like that and help (she’s so sweet) because I don’t know that it would be enough to save us and it may take forever to pay her back if it does. She suggested applying for welfare, but that would be worthless because California’s so fucked up that all they do is give you $100 a month for a shelter. We already checked this out. They may as well give you nothing at all. All we can get is food subsidies. The West doesn’t have real welfare like the East does. We made a huge mistake in coming to this damn state, that’s for sure. And how the hell did what was once such a peaceful little sanctuary come to be such a prison to me?

When Tom broke the horrible news to me I was so sure that whatever was up there had what happened to us in 2007 happen as a preparation of sorts and then made sure the money stopped as a means of backing us into a corner and ultimately on the path to our deaths, since we agreed to go together. Hell, I even picked out what I wanted to wear to die in. wipes tears from eyes But then Tom said that maybe I was interpreting it wrong. Maybe this happened to help push us faster and harder to get rid of our shit so we can maybe get the hell out of here after the holiday season, assuming he can get a job before the money runs out. After all, we did agree that we’re not only sick of most of this useless shit we have that’s just sitting around hogging up space, but if we do live to make it out of here, we’re not going to do the U-haul thing and the storage thing like last time. I’ve become the lowest-maintenance woman out there, too! All I care about is my clothes and computer. That’s all I need besides food and shelter, and of course a toothbrush is nice. Yeah, I’d be so many guy’s dream girl, LOL. If we ever do manage to bust on outa here we’re just gonna sell/dump almost everything but the bare essentials and split in just the car. We could do that now, actually, but we would have no way to live until he got a job and us into a place in whatever state we moved to.

The only way out of this mess is a job or me winning thousands of dollars. I wish I could believe that September job dream I had last spring really meant something, and the dream I recently had about us moving to Florida, but my good dreams simply don’t have a way of coming true like my bad dreams. It’s true, though, that I didn’t have nightmares galore the night before Tom got the letter about our latest blow making things about as bad as they could get. In some ways, we’re in a worse situation than we were a few years ago. Being in a trailer is better than a motel, but even though we couldn’t access our money for a couple of weeks we still had income coming in. Now we have nothing other than what we may get from Eileen and sales.

The Tonners are doing really well now for some reason. They weren’t doing well at all a year ago. Barbies are also doing better, but the Beanie Babies may not sell. They’re giving away 50 free listings, so we’re listing an item a day.

Anyway, I don’t know if not having nightmares before receiving the letter of doom is a good thing or not. It’s kind of odd since I do tend to have nightmares right before something really bad happens. But the last bad dreams I had pertaining to money were months ago. I’m still so afraid to get my hopes up! I’ve seen Tom go on enough interviews just to not get the job.

I’ve lost 5 pounds just from stress and a loss of appetite. My stomach’s pretty damn flat for a 45-year-old.

I was up most of last night and I wondered how the hell Tom could sleep. How could he be so calm and so “ok” throughout this shit? I asked him and he said, “Because nothing’s happening today.”

I wish I could make myself have that attitude and that I wasn’t afraid to die! If I could know we’d die quickly and painlessly and that the afterlife wouldn’t be any worse, I probably would give up and die. But I can’t know this and that’s what makes it hard to simply “accept” things and throw in the towel. I know I can’t escape death forever and that I have to go through it someday, but no matter how shitty things get it’s not that easy. Still, I may be left with no choice in the end because it would certainly be my choice as opposed to dying on the streets. There’s just no way I could survive out there, and I’d rather go at home in my own bed than in some alley or something.

For now, I’ve got some things on hold till we find out if we’re going to make it – my story writing, working out, etc. I haven’t even been doing any cleaning. If I’m really on death row the last thing I want to do is spend my final days cleaning.

Back to the acceptance thing – that’s my problem. I’m a stubborn bitch with a temper. I admit it. I don’t just “accept” bad things. You either love my fire as Marie used to say or you hate it. I may get sad and scared, but ultimately I get pissed and stubborn and I put up a fight. If I could just “accept” bad things even though I know they happen anyway, then I could simply accept it if someone slugged me, for example. But no, anyone who knows me knows that despite how small I am I’d kill them. Or I’d at least try to. I may not be the dumbest person alive and I may be pretty fit physically, but emotionally I’m quite a wimp. I panic and fly off the deep end and while I may appear to be taking the shit life throws at me well enough, inside I’m kicking and screaming like a 2-year-old.

Oh, and I got a kick out of how Alison said, “The Jodi I know wouldn’t give up. Come to Omaha. We could use more intelligent people.”

Well, I don’t know that I like the idea of an apartment in such a cold, snowy place or that our lives would be any better there since after all, we thought our lives would be better here. But still, if it were a matter of snapping my fingers and being there with a means of surviving till he found work, I don’t think I’d hesitate at this point. I just want to get the hell out of pesky Jesse’s trailer and out of California! So we’re gonna fight. We just may not win in the end.

Whatever happens, thanks to those who offered kind words of support. I’m still surprised though flattered for some reason that the diary guy read one of my posts. :) LOL, I really didn’t expect that.

Anyway, I slept better last time around and for some reason, I’m not nearly as stressed as you would think I still should be. After all, all he has is an interview on the horizon. Not a job that we know of.