I Can't Do This Anymore

As I sit here I wonder what in the hell has happened. It used to be you stayed out of trouble, paid your bills, did your job and things were fine. Now known felons are celebrities, paying your bills is for dopes and doing your job doesn't get you merit based increases, but plays favorites based on a slate of attributes that have nothing to do with job performance. I have worked since I was 16. Even those years when I was a stay at home Mom, I worked. Anyone who doesn't think caring for three kids largely on your own while your spouse travels is kidding themselves. I worked part time when we needed it and even moved to full time in jobs where I was far too often overworked and underappreciated.

This last week has been a doozy. I joined a local choir as just a means to relieve some stress. As it turns out what was a modest initial outlay has become a multi-level marketing type of demands for more and more. I'm the only one working at my house. I don't see bills or taxes getting any lower. My husband has given up seeking work-and frankly having watched him send out resumes and go through interviews on the phone I can't blame him. In our group of friends-all about 50 to 65 years old, many of them are either unemployed (often without compensation since they were sales reps) or working at part time jobs for subsistence salaries. Because of that I keep working.

Our property taxes have risen 15%. Our house is falling apart. We have an entire bathroom with a leak in the wall that we cannot afford to fix. We have ceilings falling and holes in the wall. And we can't fix them. We don't have the personal skills or money to make that happen. Groceries have gone up from $85 a week to $125. Even my blood pressure meds have tripled in price even though they are on the insurance formulary. People wonder why there's so much hostility it is because those of us who have worked so hard are simply tired and yet the increasing demands of the next generations place us in the situation of always having to be the provider for any of a slew of liberal schemes.

We are not spendthrifts. I drive a 17 year old car. I can't afford the cost of a new car payment and yet I can't afford the payments on a used car. It seems at every turn there's a roadblock. I didn't feel this way even ten years ago. But frankly the personification of every bad thing that has happened to me and my family has come down to this president and this administration. They will not be content until they have left us with nothing.