I about ready to lose it

[DemonSlayerMau]

I don't want to turn this into a drama forum but...*sigh* I consider the people on here to be my friends. I thought about posting in the health and personal issues thread but it seemed to focus more on health problems than anything else.
Right now I'm just about ready to lose it. I've had to go without a car for a month now, and I've had to use my grandma's car. So I can't go or do anything I want to do.
On top of it I can't afford a new car because I don't have a job, and hardly any money and I'd be really lucky if I could find a job in town. So I have to wait for my dad to work on it, and I feel bad about that because that's all he can do on the weekends now is work on that piece of junk.
I also feel bad because of all the things my grandma is already doing for me and I have to use her car.
My great uncle has been staying here because none of his family will take care of him...and while he went through some pretty serious surgery...he's a LOT better now and he has a place to go and he's been keeping me up at night with the TV up loud and his obnoxious snoring and his buddy who works for him calling early in the morning.
And now at the very end of my first semester of college I have to serve jury duty and my professor was giving me a hard time about it.
And the <deleted> just seems to be hitting the fan all the time around here. I can't stand it.
And I've got mad cabin fever. I've tried walking outside, I just went to my mom's, it just really burns because I may not be able to afford my summer classes now because financial aid won't cover the whole deal...and there are other things I won't speak of.
To put it bluntly, I'm about ready to punch someone out, I like being a nice person but I'm just so stressed out right now it's not even funny. And I'm just so sick of being here! And putting up with that stupid you can't eat or drink in your own room rule even though you're an adult! UGH!

[Nostalgiascape]

It would be understandable if you lost it...but that is THE worst thing you can do right now. Functioning under those conditions will not be easy, but you must practice forward thinking. Aggressively try and come up with solutions. And be creative about it as well.

For one, find one thing in your life that brings you peace, especially if it is a place you can go to, and do that thing or go to that place. Then do not think in terms of being under intense pressure, but rather think in terms of being on an adventure, and having to overcome obstacles in your adventure.

Write a list of Pros and Cons, then concentrate on the Pros, and create battle plans for overcoming the Cons. Alternatively, if you can ride a bike when you're not driving your Grandmothers car, exercise is an excellent stress reliever and the sooner you can relieve stress, the sooner you can think clearly to resolve the problems. These aren't quick fix solutions. They are outlines for how you can take action. Because as well all know, the only person who can help you ultimately is you.

[Pumpkin_Man]

DemonSlayer, you remind me of myself when I was in college. I could not afford to go away to school, and like you I had to live in my parents house. If I was lucky, I had a part time job that paid bare minimum wage. That was back in the early 80s, when minimum wage was $3.10 per hour. More often then not, I brought home checks between $58.00 when my hours were short, and up to a little over $100.00 when I got full time hours, which was seldom. The cars I drove were old, and guzzled gas like they owned the Persian Gulf. When they broke down, I had to wait until I had a money saved up for the parts, which often took 2 or 3 weeks. Then when I finaly had the money, it was time to break out the jack, and crawl under that old monster and work 10 or 12 hours and get it fixed. I had some nice cars, though they were old, but I had to be my own mechanic, because I could not afford a pro. My dad helped me, but we were grunt level, so everything that normaly would take a pro an hour took us 7 or 8 hours.

I love my family, but living in that house, and having all those rules were a drag to say the least. I had a younger sister who didn't escatly make things easier, to boot.

When I finaly graduated from college, my first job was at Martial Fields. Again, I got bare minimum wage, worked part time, and the company acted as though I were "privilaged" to be working for them. They ruined my entire 1983 Christmas season by making me work the lousiest hours they cold give me. It was onlhy a temp job to boot because I was selling Christmas decorations. I must have sold over $20,000 worth of fake Christmas trees and inported decorations, and my final pay check for two weeks was $32.00. I spent 22 of it filling up my gas tank. That left me a grand total of ten bucks for Christmas. Thank you Martial Fields & Co.

Mike

[Andybev01]

Cliches become so because they are true.

'this too shall pass' is one of my favorites; it only feels like forever at times.

Perhaps it's the universe attempting to show you something, although I wish the universe came with gauges or at the very least, dashboard lights, to point out that something's up and we should pay attention

You'll be fine, just pay attention to the signs as you travel along life's road.

[jadewik]

I really hate the "Oh, hug" speeches (sorry!) because I got lambasted for "whining" anywhere I tried to get on-line people to uplift me.... mostly because I'd always tell other people they didn't have it as bad as me. Apparently, some people enjoy moping about.... that or they didn't believe I had so much misery happen all at once.

In college, I lived away from home, worked part time and made $5.50/hr. One cheque went to rent ($180). The other to utility bills. I lived off day old food from work. My last year of school, they raised tuition $1k and my financial aid went down $1k. I had to come up with $2k in 3-months. My petition to the financial aid office was denied.

That's not even including the whole ordeal I went through in my personal life-- roommates moving out. Me having to come up with rent and utility setup fees... and new roommates.... my grandma died in a car crash... my dad lost his job, so I couldn't ask my 'rents for aid... yadda, yadda... (cause the list goes on and on)... all that happened over the summer. I took 2 semesters of 18 credits while working 30-35 hours a week just so I could graduate... and ended up with Pneumonia in the middle of the semester. It was the pits, I say.

.... but I'd strangely do it all over again to get to where I am now.

Things ALWAYS work out if you're doing the best you can possibly do. Set goals. Work towards them. Ask for assistance when you can-- family and close friends REALLY are key in times of despair. Stay positive. Don't dwell on your own troubles.... pick yourself up and keep moving forward! Sometimes, you have to fail a little to succeed.

Pick up a copy of this month's Reader's Digest (May 2009). They have a great article on overcoming obstacles/succeeding after failing... with uplifting stories that vary on how people dealt with their own "pit-of-despair" situations. It's a delicious read.

[Nostalgiascape]

There will never be a time here when raking someone over the coals for sharing their personal issues will be acceptable. If someone wants to reach out there is nothing wrong with posting in the forum. Depending on the severity of their circumstances I would urge you to seek immediate and local help first as a forum cannot be considered a viable alternative to professional assistance. But, and I say this as a mod and a happy Halloween.com member, this isn't a forum that will allow bashing of a person in need of reaching out.

I have been on other forums. And I have been in hateful acidic forums and I myself used to lash at like Godzilla at the droves of sarcastic hate mongers infesting such forums, before realizing the futility of doing so in a place where the Admin almost rewards the behavior. This is no such forum. And Halloween.com is no such Admin. What we have here is a good thing.

So feel free to say what is on your mind.

[DemonSlayerMau]

Thanks for understanding you guys. I've calmed down quite a bit, but just the same I appreciate the advice.
I realize there are people who are worse off than me, and too often it's difficult to count my blessings in the midst of hardship.
As for speaking my mind, well, I'll try to keep it PG for the sake of this forum.
And don't worry, I do have people I can talk to outside the forums too.
The end of the semester's coming up and Summer's coming. Warm weather is already here. My dad is almost done with my car, just has to put the "finishing touches" on my exhaust system and get a new filler tube for it.
I wish I knew how to fix my own car.
Some good news, depending on how you look at it, is NOW my dad wants me to be in charge of our vegetable garden this year!

[Nostalgiascape]

Give your dad time, he'll get her going. Do you like gardening? If so than yeah, cool.

[DemonSlayerMau]

Well, now I can plant my pumpkins right in the veggie garden. I like gardening, in fact when I was little, my dad would get me to eat my vegetables because they were grown in the garden. It makes it fun.
I just hope that they don't end up flopping, but we're gonna put manure and compost into it, so it should make the ground yeild excellent crops this year. We're also rotating the crops which is healthy for the crops and soil.
He's going to do the hard part by rotitilling it (I can't spell worth beans sometimes. Haha. Get it? Beans? Gardening? Ahahaha. Erhem) and then I get to plant the seeds, water it, and pluck the weeds.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's exactly the same way my parents got me to eat my veggies when I was little. We planted a garden, and I was so proud of my work that I just had to eat my veggies. I also grew pumpkins, and since it was the South side of Chicago, there wre not critters to munch them. Yes, we had an ocassional squirl or two, but for the most part, the big city traffic kept them at bay.

On a side note, the neighborhood where I lived in Chicago was home to the very only and very last farm located within the Chicago City limits. So I had a mixed bag of cuntry and city aspects to my upbringing.

I must also say that some of the posts I've read here really helped me to put a few things in perspective. Thanks to DemonSlayer, I'm counting my own blessing that I knew enough about cars that I could fix a lot of the things that went wrong with it. In fact, next weekend I am going to put a new set of spark plugs in my motorcycle.

So to all of you in college, just barely out of college, or in HS and planning to go to college, HAN IN THERE.

Mike

[Nostalgiascape]

I had left pumpkins out on the lawn by two trees one year, 2002 I think. Instead of throwing them out I had decided to let nature take its course where they sat. I had a suspicion. And sure enough, the seeds survived the winter, wnet into the ground and the following spring I had two patches of wild pumpkin vines. So I built fences around both patches to prevent sprawling.

[DemonSlayerMau]

Hey guess what guys, I forgot to mention that my car's back on the road.
I also had to go to Jury Duty...but I got to get out of it. I'm so relieved that I wasn't chosen for the jury. Now I'm good for 6 years.

[Andybev01]

6 years?!?

You lucky dog (cat), I get pegged every 2 years like freakin' clock-work.

[Pumpkin_Man]

I had jury duty for two Novembers in a row, and now I haven't heard from them since 2006.

Mike