Surviving Alone

After leaving my husband, I started working more hours, and put the kids in daycare for the first time.  My job doesn't pay that well, and my brother offered to help me out with the daycare.

The kids' dad started off okay, paying me a hundred or so per pay check, starting around November 2010.  Between January and May 2011, he hadn't even given me $300 total for the kids.  And I didn't receive a dime from him after that.  He took half our tax return in February, and my half went to pay my brother for what he had paid in daycare up to that point.  And their dad still wouldn't give us any money.

On my W2 from 2011, I made less than $17,000.  Now I know that seems alot to people who only have themselves to pay for, but when you are paying $400 in rent and $70 every two days for gas, buying food, clothes for the kids as they grow out of them, etc, it isn't enough to survive.

I work my ass off, and honestly, I have nothing to show for it.  At this point, I'm about to be over drawn around 7 times by the end of the month... and some how I have to make up for that to have enough for rent for the month after that.  It's a cycle that I'll never get out off until I a) get paid more and/or b) get more hours.

I wonder if this was the stuff my mom dealt with when she first became a solitary parent.  Though with her, it was not by choice.  And since my dad died, she did get help from social security.  I get my pay check and that's it.

Their dad is not required to pay child support because we are legally still married.  I want more than anything right now to be able to say I am NOT married to him.  That part of my life is totally over.

It is hard financially to do it alone.  But aside from that, I feel like this is how it is suppose to be.  Just me and the kids and Yoshi.  I am alot happier this way.  Someday I'll find someone worth bringing into my world.  But they have alot to prove to me at this point.  I'm a bitter old maid when it comes to men.  I have an enormous crush on a guy, and I'm scared to death to say anything about it because I don't want to ruin the vision I have of him.  I don't want him to show me that he's like the rest.  So I leave it alone and just smile every time I see him or talk to him.  And I keep things perfect by keeping quiet.  It's okay.  I'm more than just surviving alone... I'm succeeding alone.