Surviving Week 1

As of 3:00 this afternoon I will have been laid off, or at least known about my lay off, for one week now. Ok, I survived one week. So many emotions have been spent. Anger, fear, sadness, boredom, indifference, and the list can go on and on. I spent most of last weekend in bed. I was so tired. It was a real shock to the system. Like a car accident only with emotional damage. There was no direction, nothing to look forward too. I liked my job, had plenty of friends there, and had good people to work for. I knew what I was doing and did it well. Now all I could see were the days, weeks, months stretched before me with school drop off at 9 and school pick up at 3 with the occasional Gymboree class (a gift from mom) and cub scouts thrown in for entertainment. Let’s not forget all the What If’s as well. What if we can’t pay on the house, I can’t find a job, don’t like the job I find, have to give up one of the cars. I know we won’t go hungry, family won’t allow that. I know we will have a place to live, even if it is renting from family. So the very bottom line in all this is we will be ok. Yet that is the hardest part to remember.

We were already in financial trouble. Living paycheck to paycheck and barely making it then. Over the last 3 years the raises ceased to exist, no cost of living increase added to the paychecks, bonuses withered away to barely enough for a meal out, and furloughs dipped into what little was left. They say to have 3 months worth of savings, we couldn’t even manage one paycheck’s worth.

We stopped using the credit cards, which were our lifeline, and we stopped paying on them too. It has been both freeing and scary to live without plastic. What happens when you stop paying on your cards? They start calling you. ALL THE TIME. I turned the ringer off on the phone because it was really stressing me out with the ringing all day. The toddler would run screaming around the house “PHONE PHONE RINGING”. Family is annoyed that we don’t answer the phone anymore, I just blame it on the toddler. Don’t want to wake her up and can’t possibly talk right at this moment. Not hearing the ringing has helped, especially now that I am at home all day.

I contacted the credit counseling people, they wanted to make a payment plan where we were paying even more than the minimum payment that we couldn’t afford in the first place. The debt consolidation people were the same. Nothing helped, just kept us in the same debt circle. That’s when we knew bankruptcy was most likely our only choice. A few co-workers were sharing their bankruptcy stories with me. It helped so much to know we were not the only ones. Everyone had their own reasons. Some suddenly found themselves single moms, some just kept piling on the debt, using one card to pay for another like we were doing just trying to make ends meet.

So now here we are. Toddler watching Elmo, big kid at school. Answering machine taking creditors calls. Friends from work texting how sorry they are. Me trying not to lie in bed all day. Next step: see a lawyer about how to file for bankruptcy, and maybe I can get some vacuuming done today…