seeking home

It seems when challenges happen they happen in a volley.

A few days ago my husband and I got the news that the house we’re living in, my grandparents’ house, will be put up for sale within the next couple months, and that my grandparents are moving out in August to Ohio.

My husband has a job. I found some part-time work that had me hopeful for better, more permanent things in the near future. At the least we’d no longer be leaking money.

We get this news and we’re left scrambling. How? How do we survive on our own when two meager wages does not equal a livable income? Not in Florida we can’t. My grandpa invites us to move into the top floor of the two-story duplex that they’ll be buying. Our very own place! For the first time in almost a year!

But we have to go immediately because jobs and after some discussion “immediately” defined itself as 1-2 weeks, now closer to one week. We’ll move into my cousin’s home which is a historical home built in 1840. It’s the kind of house a person could get lost in. He’s not on a six-figure income, just incredibly savvy, and he’s willing to let us stay with him until we can move into that duplex.

At the least we don’t have to consider returning to Korea.

Now the other part of this story–yesterday I went to the doctor to get my blood work results and was told that I have high cholesterol and need to do something about it immediately. That wasn’t what I expected to hear. Yet I think about it and yeah, I don’t exercise these days, I don’t eat well, what do I expect exactly?

This could be the reason my vision’s screwed up–blind spot, flashes of light.

Maybe it’s the reason I feel like I have the flu right now? No idea. She didn’t really give me much outside of my results.

Yesterday I thought, maybe my body has finally broken and my brain hasn’t gotten the memo yet to follow suit. In the mornings, while husband and son are sleeping, I sit at the computer and think about everything before us and my eyes well with tears. This is too much. How do we keep going like this?

I look around this room, the one that was supposed to be for my son and has become makeshift office/storage. It’s cluttered with unpacked boxes, vacuum-sealed bags, storage tubs, scattered all about. There’s barely a place to walk. The “desk” is a rickety collapsible table better suited for the outdoors. We’re fortunate to have the space. When we were living with his parents it was a far sadder, more frustrating situation in its own way.

I don’t want to leave Florida. I don’t want to start from scratch yet again.

What’s that song say? “You can’t go home and you can’t stay here.”

There we are, the defining theme of the moment.

My husband says to think of it as another adventure. After all, wasn’t that what moving to Korea was for me? That’s what it was for him when he moved to New Zealand.

We were single then, I remind him. If things went awry, we only had to worry about ourselves. Now we’ve got our son and I want stability for him. Elusive stability. A two-year old doesn’t need this kind of adventure. And quite frankly, I’m all adventured out.

But there is a piece of me that’s excited because there’s that familiar spark of hope, that everything will work out and it will be better tomorrow than it was today. That in the near future we can stop struggling and worrying, looking at our bank account with its daily plummeting numbers.

And one day I can walk through the door and when I think to myself, “I’m home,” it’ll be the truest sense of that phrase.

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unemployment breeds stress

Over the past few days, the shaking has gotten worse.  A long time ago, back when I hadn’t yet seen a professional, I would’ve said that my issue is strictly social.  Well, social situations don’t sit well with me, that’s true.  It doesn’t have to be social though to send me spiraling into an attack.

We’ve been in the US for a little over three months now, living off a money cushion that we saved while in Korea.  The cushion is reasonably thick barring us not losing our minds and spending it.  We did though when we first got here.  Black Friday came and husband felt that we absolutely had to go shopping to scoop up all those good deals.  Then Christmas and when everyone else was giving us stuff, how could we not?  Husband wanted to go to the outlet and when I expressed hesitation, he pitched a fit because I guess he’s homesick and shopping is his remedy.  Plus I didn’t have a computer and was using his and that’s all on me but I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t have my own computer and there’s no way I could take a work at home job without one.

So… spending without income.

I’ve thrown out a lot of applications for both me and the husband.  At the beginning it was just full time jobs.  Now all I want is something, anything, so long as it keeps our bank account from sloping steadily toward a negative.

Finally something has come up for me. That’d be the work at home job I mentioned above.  I have to go through training before they let me have it but yeah, hey, getting paid to work from home and set my own hours?  This sounds awesome, right?  Research tells me it’s legitimate so, yay, I’ve got a shot at a decent job that can keep us at the very least treading water.

Only we have a 19 month old son and husband wasn’t pulling his weight watching him.  Then he yelled at me for not fixing him a sandwich while I was trying to figure out the training.  I was already having issues with my nerves before he did this to me.

He’s homesick and depressed.  His dad’s birthday is coming up and he’s going to miss it.  These are things I get.  I’ve been there.

His sabotaging our first chance at income is not something I get and I am so, so afraid that if this opportunity falls through it’s going to be another round of pulling teeth to simply get another shot.  Three months and this is the first time I’ve gotten a bite.  Three months.  With all the applications I’ve put in for my husband, there hasn’t been so much as a nibble.  Of course he’s insisting that he wants government work only so there’s that. It severely restricts what a person can apply for.

Thus shaking, that awful stomach clenching, chest tightening, and lying in bed at night, breathing deeply to get the thoughts to just-shut-up-please-my-son-will-be-waking-a-few-times-over-the-course-of-the-night-so-oh-god-let-me-sleep-at-least-a-little.

I wish I could go through all this with grace and silent strength.  My brain is also telling me that if I get this job then all will be fine.  We’ll be saved.  It’ll improve things I’m sure.  How improved?  That’s a great question.  I hope I get the job so I can find out.

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