Messages By: JWL123

I do not live on one income, but might as well be as many people as I have to support. I am supporting 8 people on my income and my husband gets a small disability check. I am really struggling to pay everything and need some advice as to how I can make it. By the time I pay all the bills there is nothing left to budget. I am supporting my daughter and her three little boys as ther dad ran off to another state when she filed child support. I also support my oldest daughter. I took in my neice when she was 1 week old, she is now 11. I could apply for child support for her but my sister said she would take her back if I did. She is my child and I will not give her up.

I am the only one working a full time job. I need to get a second one but I have fibromylgia, a degenerative disk in my back and several other health problems and can barely handle the first job. My husband says he wants to get a job but I know with his health problems he cannot handle it. He is a paranoid schizophrenic and he has high blood, high cholesterol and diabeties. If he took a job and couldn't handle it then once he lost his disability it would be near impossible to get it back.

My oldest daughter has some mental health issues although she doesn't see anyone. She has very low self esteem and cuts on herself all the time. She is very anti-social. She gets some of the cutting from me because I have done it.

I just don't know what to do anymore. My vehicle is falling apart. It has 226,000 miles on it. It is the only vehicle we have to drive. My daughter has to bring me to work which is 25 miles one way and then she has to pick me up so we are putting over a 100 miles a day on it. It needs breaks and tires but I can't get any right now.

Please, anyone with advice please let me know.

I cannot beleive Shannon married Kevin knowing he was abusive long before they got married. No amount of money is worth putting your kids through hell. Of course the kids act out. All they know is abuse. Shannon was already in a prior abusive relationship. Those kids deserve a better life and if she can't get a backbone and do better for the kids she doesn't deserve them. I wish my parents would have given me away because of all the hell I went through.

Shannon do something for your kids before it is too late. If you don't you do not deserve to be a mother.

I know what it is like to have drug addicts in your family. I have 2 sisters and 3 brothers. We didn't have a very good childhood, it was filled with physical and mental abuse and for me, it was sexual abuse. One sister lives in tennessee and never comes around, the other sister is a drug addict although she says she is clean now. I don't believe her for a minute. She's been doing crack cocaine, pills and marijuana for years. My brother is in prison where he has been on and off since he was 14. The last time he got out he started doing cocaine with my sister and he started stealing to support their habit, he robbed a bank this time. My oldest brother is an alcholic and never comes around and my youngest brother is doing crack cocaine. He is so bad that there are days when his stomach hurts so bad he can barely move. He has been in and out of the hospital to try and find out what is wrong with his stomach but they cannot find anything other than ulcers. I beleive it is the drugs and he doesn't eat like he is supposed to.

I have tried pot a couple of times but I didn't like it. How anyone can like feeling that way from drugs is beyond me. I can't even stand the taste of beer or anything like that. What do people get from being so high it makes you sick?  I wish my family would get help. It affects not only them but everyone around them but then they don't care too much about others anyway. They have destroyed their lives and now my sister is ruining her children who are 15 year old twins. She also has an 11 year old that I raise. She didn't want her because she is mixed and she got pregnant when she was selling herself for drugs. She also has a two year old daughter whom she lost custody of when she went to prison recently. We were hoping prison would straighten her out but it didn't.

I cannot beleive Lee and Amy. This seems  to me like a spoiled little girl who doesn't want her parents telling her what she can and can't do. Her parents are only trying to protect her and her beautiful children and it is such a shame she is behaving this way.  It sounded like Lee is not the father of the oldest child. If he is not I would like to know where the father is and if he knows his baby is being abused? If that were my child being abused by a stepparent I would yank them out of there so fast it would make your head spin.

Amy needs to decide what is more important to her, Defying her parents and staying with this abusive jerk or keeping her children. At this point with her defying CPS and letting Lee into the home she does not need these children to be put into harms way. Her parents need to do everything they can to get custody before something tragic happens. Lee's mother doesn't need the children. She is in total denial about her son.

I cannot beleive how much debbie and I have in common. I have two grown daughters living at home. The oldest one acts just like amy. She doesn't have any kids, Thank goodness cause she sure cant handle kids. She is lazy, sleeps as much as she can, refuses to do any cleaning. When she does her laundry it usually takes her 2 or 3 days to wash 3 or 4 laods. I usually have to tell her to take her clothes out of the dryer, put the clothes from the washer in the dryer and start another load. She is 26 years old. She lives with me as does her boyfriend. I would like to kick them to the curb but I desperately need the 50 dollars he gives me every week. If it wasn't for the money I would not be able to get to work to support their butts.

My 24 year old daughter also lives with me. She has 3 little boys ages 6 years, 3 years and a 4 month old. The father of the 2 oldest boys dumped her on my doorstep when the 6 year old was 11 months old. They were married and thinking about getting back together when she got pregnant again. They did not get back together and when he found out that she filed child support he left the state. He is an illegal immigrant so they cant find him or they say they cant.

So their support comes from me. The baby's dad is also an illegal immigrant who said he was skipping town as soon as the child support went through.

She desperately wants a job and has been searching whenever she can. We only have one peice of crap vehicle and it is already costing me a fortune to get myself to work. She had at least two jobs where she was fired for having to be out with a sick child. And she lost a couple of jobs because of her first husband. Unlike the oldest one though she does her part around the house. She cooks and cleans and she does get food stamps for her and the boys. However It is still a burden on me to take care of all the people. I am also raising my 11 year old neice whom I have had since she was a week old.

I can't just throw them out on the streets and tell them to fend for themselves. My grandbabies need a safe, decent place to live. She would go to work in an instant if she could find a job. Even if she did find a job she doesn't have any transportation to get there.

I just want to tell debbie that even though amy is mooching off her and her husband  to hang in there and maybe one day things will change. I can't see much hope for myself though.

I am like Debbie, I feel guilty about wanting my kids to grow up and move out. They are the only life I have.

Any advice from anyone?

I too live with chronic pain. I have fibromylgia and degenerative disk disease. I also have rotary cuff tendonitis in my fight shoulder. Some days it is all I can do to get out of bed. I am in constant pain. I cannot take pain medicines, The doctor has tried me on about every one there is and they make me so sick I can't function at all. Right now my back is killing me and my whole body in general hurts. I don't know what else to try. I can't afford to go to the doctor too often.

I didn't know you could have surgery for a degenaritive disk.

Any ideas on how to deal with the pain when medicine doesn't work?

That's what I am doing I guess. I am hanging in there. There isn't much else you can do. What is most frustrating to me is people don't really understand what chronic pain can do. It is something people cannot see. Whenever I am having a real bad day and I come home from work and I am quite my husband will say " are you mad at me, what did I do?"  That makes me so mad. I have to justify my pain to everyone. If I am really sick and in more pain than usual everyone asks me why I am mad at them. I am not mad, I am in pain and would just like to rest.

I am not a big talker anyway.

This can be so frustrating at times. The chronic pain causes depression, The depression causes chronic pain more and now I was diagnosed with a degenerative disk in my back. I have to go to the doctor at the end of June to see if I now have arthritis in my knees and elbows.

I also have an irregular heartbeat I have to take medicine for.

How do you answer someone who constantly asks if you are mad at them just because you are in pain and don't feel like talking?

I to have fibro and I know what you mean when you say people look at you like you are funny when you tell them you are in constant pain.  I guess they think you have to look sick to be sick. I also have ddd, Rotary cuff tendonitis and I am going to the doctor June 29th to see if I have arthritis in my joints on top of everything else. I also beleive my daughter has it. She has to go to the doctor this week to find out. She also suffers from constant headaches.

I am 45 years old and was diagnosed in 97. I tried to get disibility but was turned down. Now I can't even try for disibility because I cannot support everyone I have to support on a disibility check. You wouldn't beleive the troubles I have there. If interested I will tell you about it later right now I have to go because I do not have a computer at home, I am using the one at work.