I have written less than 2k words in a month or perhaps longer, I don’t know; my memory is worth nothing.
It’s not that I don’t have things to write. It’s not that I don’t have ideas. It’s not that i don’t have time or motivation or a computer to write on. I have all the tools I need to do what I want to do, but one simple thing stops me:
Stress.
As most people who follow me are probably aware by now, we are in the process of filing for bankruptcy. Well, we’re in the fundraising stage because lawyers are not cheap and someone, somewhere decided you needed to pay a fair sum of money to show that you have no money. Make it make sense.
This is a very, very stressful thing for me. There is uncertainty around what debts they’ll discharge and which ones they’ll stick us with. There’s uncertainty of how we’ll get into a place of our own when everyone wants a 700 credit score just to rent and everyone knows bankruptcy wreaks havoc on your credit score for a good, long while.
It’s also stressful for me because this is our last ditch effort. Neither of us want to go into bankruptcy. We’d both probably sell kidneys to stay out of it. But that’s not a feasible option and we have spent the past several years trying everything else and doing whatever we could in order to get out from under our debts with no luck. When so much has gone wrong or not worked out for so long, trying something that might work out is completely terrifying. Especially with the uncertainties. Especially since the lawyer advised us to stop paying on everything now (we’ve stopped on most things, but still have a few smaller loans, our Care Credit, the car and back taxes that we have to continue to pay on. The Care Credit and the car are because we are hoping to be able to keep them after all this is done, as the car is a necessity and the CC has saved our hides many time with our animals.)
This has nothing to do with me feeling like a failure or a fuck up for having to turn to this option. I know how hard we’ve worked, how we’ve steadily broken ourselves apart just to stay afloat. I think of this in terms of uncertain possibilities and uncertainty is not something I handle particularly well, but mostly–
I have a lot of trauma surrounding poverty and homelessness. I grew up never knowing if we’d have water, power, a working phone. My mom would have to beg money from church goers just to get us groceries so that we could eat. More than once, we would wind up being thrown out of the house we were staying in and I’ve spent my time being homeless as a child, spent my time couch surfing. I’ve lost my possessions more times than I can count to the point where I have one baby picture of me and that’s it. That’s the only proof that I existed before I came to California almost 20 years ago.
So, the past few years have been particularly heavy on me. And do keep in mind that it has been since COVID hit that all this started; you’re only hearing about it now because it’s finally reached a breaking point where we may or may not be homeless because we simply cannot afford to pay rent on top of all of our debts. Because I reached a point where I could not work anymore. Because my wife reached a point where her body was starting to break down and she was hitting severe burnout from how much she was working.
And now we’ve reached a point where I can’t write. Fiction, anyway, since I’m rambling here. I’ve been having to pull unrelated forewords from unpublished stories to offer my Ko-Fi subscribers just because I can’t even manage a 2k word idea. As someone who has been writing their entire life, this is very depressing to me.
All I can do is wait for this all to be over and see how it plays out. Hopefully our long string of bad luck will break and this bankruptcy will be a good thing. Hopefully we’ll be able to get help saving up for a few months of rent and someone will take that in exchange for whatever damage is done to our credit.
In the meantime, I’m just sort of… here. A shell of a person. A shell of a writer. Sick with stress and wondering if I will ever see myself again.
To find out more about our situation and how you can help, please check out the following link that my wife created: https://dontfoxthisup.carrd.co/