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Priestess
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

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Joined: 7 Aug 2013
Age: 36
Gender: Female
Posts: 1

16 Aug 2014, 5:43 pm

I am 26 years old and I still live with my parents, along with my husband and twins. It's probably one of my most shameful truths, that I'm not successful enough at this point in my life to support them independently. About six weeks ago, our son was diagnosed with ASD. I have not been diagnosed with anything specific, but my psychiatrist suspected ASD (due to sensory issues) and bipolar, I take Seroquel and it helps. I work because my husband can't. The cost of daycare for two children would be crazy. My car is paid off, but we really need to get a second one so my husband can take our son to special therapy. We are lucky to live in a big city with a lot of resources for him. Our son will qualify for free daycare that is supposed to help him when he turns 3, that is in about 6 months, but we still have to consider our daughter. She is NT, and the places where my husband will be taking our son probably won't allow us to have her there with him. I don't think we'd be able to afford daycare for her on whatever my husband would be able to make. He has never been very good at holding jobs, and I have a much better job history.

I used to have a full time job, I worked there ever since I was 18, but I lost my job after 6 years because I got a bad review and lost my temper over the situation... over the remark on the paper that I was supposed to sign. I was supposed to sign the paper agreeing to "corrective action being taken due to the poor review". The review was for the year during which I was pregnant with the twins, and it was considered a high-risk pregnancy. The remark was concerning my attendance, and I received the lowest remark possible, due to the fact that I was "not valued as a reliable member of the team, due to the fact that my co-workers had remarked on many occasions that they did not know on any particular day if they could expect me at work or not." I had complained to my doctor that I felt like I was going to lose my cool at work, and she put me on a SSRI, which I said wasn't going to help, but she did it anyway. I was told to "give it a try". I ended up completely freaking out about the comment on my review, verbally slamming my supervisor over the awful comments on my review, and the whole stint resulted in my walking out. I was upset because it was a high-risk pregnancy, and those times when I had to call in to work and say that I wasn't going to be there that day were days when my blood pressure was insanely high and I was forced to go from the maternal fetal specialist to the hospital for 12-24 hours of monitoring, depending on the severity of the problem. One of the babies, the girl, had a hole in her heart called and EIF (which resolved itself within 2 months of birth) which was also a great concern to my team of doctors. Whenever my blood pressure or the babies movements were irregular, I was sent to the ER. I couldn't help days like that, and I couldn't foresee them either. I was so mad. I was also mad because every review prior to that gave me poor remarks for not being sociable with my co-workers. What's the point of having a job? To hang out with your buddies, or to work? It was all so confusing and irritating.

I actually ended up contacting a lawyer who was willing to work with me on a contingency basis, simply based on the remarks on the review, how they would be upsetting to anyone. The facts also indicated that the review was based on the opinions of my co-workers, and not the opinions of my direct supervisor or manager, which isn't quite fair. I also had an email that a co-worker "accidentally" sent to me, complaining that they thought I was bipolar, and that didn't help the company's case, because I reported it, but didn't request that she be written up or fired... I only asked that she be spoken to about the incident, because I thought that would be enough to stop the harassment, and it was. Things like that didn't happen anymore, but that review really set me off. I ended up not following through with the lawsuit, because I had family that still worked for the company, and I was scared. It's been too long now to do anything about it, and I'm happy to not earn large amounts of money through lawsuits, I would rather earn my money legitimately.

Now I work part time, but I make almost as much money as I did before, because I worked so far from home before, and I work so close to home now. I was spending so much on fuel to work at my full time job. I do miss the benefits for my husband and I. Oh well. Our children are on Medicaid, which I have no problem with because I have always worked and paid a tax for that, and it exists for people in need of health care, like my children. I pay out of pocket for everything else, I get some help with my RX through AstraZeneca, but I don't feel like needing to be on medicine is something that I should be ashamed of, if the medicine is working as intended.

Anyway, now I still live with my mom and dad, and I want to go back to school. I have just over 1/3 of the credits I need to have an associates degree in biology. I want to work with plants... because they are beautiful, and they aren't people. I still want to achieve my goals. I need to. My husband isn't going to succeed if I give him the chance, I have given him several chances before, and things never work out. I didn't know this before our son was diagnosed with ASD recently, but my husband had a lot of struggles as a child concerning gross motor skills and fine motor skills that lead me to believe that he might have ASD, as well. He had to receive special therapies to learn to write without breaking a pen or pencil, and he could not tie his shoes. His handwriting is *terrible*. It literally looks like a young child's handwriting. I'm not trying to slam my husband here... I love him dearly, and he is a wonderful person and a great father to our twins. He just isn't as well equipped to work and succeed in this world as I am, so I suppose what I'm getting at is that he is better off raising the kids and I am better off being the one who works. My husband is extremely good looking, and his face was beaten severely by 3 men - who he believed to be his friends - during his late teens and he had to have all kinds of reconstructive surgery. He just has a few scars, he looks about the same, I think the scars add character... but he hates them, and he doesn't trust people. I don't blame him. I saw the photos of the incident, and parts of his face looked like raw hamburger meat. They were trying to knock him out, but he wouldn't lose consciousness, which is why they beat him so terribly. It was horrible what happened to him, and I can see how something like that would impact a man's ability to hold a job, or even function normally in society. Working usually requires being part of a team, and being part of a team requires some amount of trust, which is difficult for my husband. Again, I feel like I am much better equipped to do the facing of the world, and the sucking it up. I just have my own set of issues, and I don't know how to move forward without offending anyone, or making anyone feel like they're doing the bulk of the "work at home", or that I'm relying too much on anyone else for my own needs or the needs of my family. I just have so much work to do before I can take care of everyone without having to rely on financial assistance from anyone but myself.

I struggle terribly with math, I always have. I hate adderall, but I will admit that it helps me so much with math in college. I am thinking about getting all of my math out of the way, and maybe a few super easy classes along the way... and then worrying about everything else later. My psychiatrist has given me the okay to take adderall xr in a very low dose once I'm in school again. I refuse to take the tablet form, they are speedy and horrible. I pay for my school out of pocket. Sometimes my parents help. I didn't have any issue with completing my courses until I became pregnant with the twins. I'm hoping that the necessity to succeed will push me forward, but I just worry so much, because I have issues of my own... and then I feel selfish, because my son needs therapy to lead the kind of life everyone hopes for him, my daughter is absolutely brilliant but I have very little time for her with work, and my husband's main focus is on our son and we can't afford daycare for our girl. I think she would love to be in daycare until she's old enough for pre-k. I am also considering the possibility of SSI... not only for my son, but possibly for my husband. Does that make me horrible? It's not as if I would want to use the money to buy extravagant things for myself or my family members, I would want to use the money to live independently, as a family, with my husband and my twins. Is that possible for us?

Also, we only have one car. One horrible car, my first car, which I proudly paid off three years early because I'm great with money. As soon as I paid it off early, the A/C stopped working. Every time I go anywhere with the twins, they are like two poor little wilted flowers. They don't even want to play at the park by the time we get there, they just want to be somewhere cool. They are both very sensitive to sunlight. I'm happy to continue driving my horrible hot car, but it would be nice to have a second car with working A/C for my husband to transport the children in. My husband has a lot of work ahead of him too, raising twins while I work is not going to be easy for him.

I just want things to work out, and if there is no help out there I will work my butt off because I'm capable of doing great things, it's just that part of myself that keeps saying, "You aren't good enough, look at the situation you're in, you're clearly destined for failure." I don't feel that way very often now at all, but when I'm back in school doing the things I struggle with, I'm worried that those thoughts are going to come back and help cause me to fail. All I want is to succeed. I need to succeed for my family.

Sorry for that wall of text, it's probably riddled with errors and things of that nature, but I don't care. I just needed somewhere to vent about all of this. I hope everyone is having a lovely day. I need to go watch some Naruto for the feelings.