We often speak of **** hitting the fan. I hope that some of you neophytes out there realize that it doesn't take a ChiCom nuke, a hurricane, or global war to cause the proverbial fecal matter from impacting the oscillating blades...and get it all over you. At any given moment, we are all one paycheck away from TSHTF. We are all standing on the edge, awaiting a catastrophic personal calamity. All it really takes is an injury, an eviction notice, unforeseen legal trouble, a single mistake or unhappy accident of fate or life, and we're facing the end of the world as we know it...on a personal and individual level. How prepared you are for war, weather, or zombie hordes doesn't matter a tinker's **** if you find yourself in a personal economic crisis that guns can't kill or 4wd can't pull you out of.
I hate this place...I've said it before, or at least alluded to it in my posts. The place of my residence is the outer circle of Hades...purgatory, and was even before the last 10 years of government regulation and involvement ran the last vestige of socioeconomic hope from the region. No more industry. No more coal mines. 25% unemployment. 28% retirees and disabled. The trickle-down effect means that this area is left with nothing.
Up until now, I have avoided becoming part of the negative statistics. Between my own small family business, my work with filming in the area, my wife's employment in the tax field, and my ability to seemingly squeeze blood out of any turnip, we've been well. Not rich, not exceedingly prosperous, but dandy enough to be happy. Until “the way things are” came and kicked me square in the ***. I don't want to go into great detail, but now my wife is laid off, and I have had to close my business. Apparently, when noone in a 20 mile radius has money, small businesses are the first to go.
We've been unable to find work. I know there are those of you who are going to say “Suck it up and go mow grass or get a job at McDonalds. Well **** you. My wife and I have both applied at every place around, including McDonalds, and because nobody else has a job, there are at least twenty people in my town who mow yards for the price of gas and a pack of cigarettes. Nobody is hiring. In fact, most places, including the local Wal Mart are slowly laying off. The K-mart is closing. You wait in line at the grocery store because they have two cashiers working on a friday afternoon. The unemployment office pretty much told my wife that there are few job offerings coming up, and hundreds of applicants daily.
We were prudent. We have a savings. We have a stockpile of food. You burn through it. Quick. We're discussing turning off the cable, the internet, and maybe the phone to save money. We're eating bologna sandwiches and ramen noodles for lunches. The soda I had at a friend's house today was the first I've had in...what...a week? Not spending money is not a cure for having none coming in. It is only a stop-gap. It's a postponement of inevitability. It all adds up, and what it's adding up to now is a huge charlie foxtrot.
Advise me, please. Tell me to go get a job when I'm attempting to do just that. Tell me to deal with it and go live in a tent when I have a wife and a 14 year old daughter to take care of. Tell me it is my own fault I'm in this situation, to take some personal responsibility as a man for what happens to me and my family. I do. I have failed my family. I am a disgrace to myself, a disgrace to my father, a disgrace to my country, and I admit it. If I hadn't ****** up in school, I could have maybe become a doctor or a lawyer and have a nice big house and a mercedes benz. If I hadn't been an idiot, I wouldn't have the health problems I do today, and be overseas kicking some jihadists *** around the moon. It's my fault I have nightmares, and that I'm worthless and incapable of ANYTHING except to get shot at and return the love. If I had saved more money, maybe we could last a while longer than the five months until the last pennies dry up. I ***** up, and I'm sitting here today, wishing I had the money to buy enough tequila to drown myself in because my little girl told me that when she gets out of high school and gets a good job, I can move in with her and she'll take care of me because I've taken care of her. Leave the room time. Time to walk away all dignified and composed, then fall apart in private because your child isn't supposed to take care of you because you can't find a job like some stinking bum. You've already failed as a man, so why not cry? Why not let the realization hit you that you may lose everything and die in the gutter because you had ONE mission in life: To take care of that kid and your wife, and you FAILED THAT MISSION.
I will not take charity. I will not beg. I will not sell drugs like a quarter of the people in my town do. I would rather break the law and steal to survive and feed my family than to beg in the streets. If things go badly, will I lose it all? Yeah, I will. The house, the car, my preps. Everything. My daughter can live with relatives, my wife can move back to PA and live with her parents. Me? I have nothing and nobody to fall back on. If I can't find work, and lose my family and my home, I'm not entirely sure I could live with that. I don't know how things are going to pan out, but let this be a lesson to some of you. Your own personal SHTF situation could come any day. Are you ready? Because I wasn't.
My SHTF...
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