[ SECRET POST #2022 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2022 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 088 secrets from Secret Submission Post #289.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Not everyone has families with the willingness and means to support them. Sometimes families are willing and able to provide food and shelter, but are abusive and toxic to go back to. And sometimes it's just a matter of just not being able to get to their families when things go wrong, because transportation is way out of your price range.

I think one of the reasons I get so angry about this kind of shit is that I was unemployed and completely broke with thousands of dollars in debt five months after graduating college. And that was years ago, when the economy was significantly better than it is now. Luckily, I had awesome and understanding parents with room and money enough to take me in and a friend who bought me enough gas to get my ass back home. But I know that all that separates younger-me from the kids I see on the street is the generosity and financial solvency of my friends and family, which sadly aren't things everyone has to fall back on.

[(Anonymous)]

DA, with a long-ass story because yeah, it just takes one turn for it all to wind up different.

I feel you, anon. I moved from the East Coast to LA a few weeks after graduation from college in 2006, to some gorgeous SoCal weather and a promising-enough sounding job in print media advertising sales (Ha! Oh, it is to laugh, now, thinking about that. "Promising job in print-media advertising in 2006", more the fool was I). Not the best money ever for LA, but hell -- for a just-grad English major? Palm trees and health insurance and a 401k, enough money to pay my bills if not really enough to sock anything into savings, living that dream.

Cut to the next spring, and my company closed its domestic side of business. That's half our company, out of like ten American offices across the country, laid-off. I got a month's notice -- a lot more than most get -- and hit the ground running, but nothing came of it. I registered for unemployment after a healthy round of internal debate, received one week's check, and then got kicked the fuck off it because I got a part-time job. So my part-time job paid less than I would have received on unemployment, who cares, work is always better, right? The State of California had not one single fuck to spare. So I spent the next five months making coffee at a Borders and netting less than two hundred a month after rent. Did someone live off her credit cards during that time, to buy gas and food? Damn right she did. We ditched cable but kept the internet (my roommate was doing just fine, and I needed *something*), and I was at the point of giving up smoking for the cost (yeah, cause when you're in that situation what you really want to do is add any more stress into your life, but money's money -- I could justify it to myself with the nickels and dimes from our "tip jar" at the store) when it was put-up or shut up time at lease-renewal and I moved back to the East Coast and she moved to the Valley with her boyfriend.

During those five months? I went on TWENTY-SEVEN JOB INTERVIEWS. I spent hours every day drafting cover letters and reworking resumes to suit job postings. Applied to all types of office jobs, and not just those. I'd worked in restaurants all through college, couldn't find a damn thing there either. Anything that looked to make more than I was eeking out I went for, but nothing. Nothing at all.

But, you know. I was young, educated with a college degree, able-bodied. Majority ethnicity and native English-speaker. Smart and personable and presentable. Surely something would come up, since I legit had the deck stacked in my favour. But -- it didn't. Because you know what? Something doesn't always come up, no matter how much it seems like it should based on the surface criteria. Sometimes things just *don't*.

Thank GOD my parents were able and willing to let me come back home and live with them, because otherwise? I had one real friend in LA who I could truly count on in a pinch, my roommate who was from back home. 2600 miles from home and all my friends and family, with one reliable person in a jam? Yeah, time to peace while I could.

I burned my credit on that trip home too, dude. Burned what was left of it and burned it bad, but I had no choice. From LA to the East Coast I spent over $4,000. And this is when gas was like 2.60 most places that summer. Four fucking grand -- between gas, hotels, food, and the awesome and exciting car repairs all along Interstate 40 to get me home. It was -- a thing.

If I didn't have a place to go at the end of that trip? And if I didn't have enough room on a credit card I'd taken out on a whim to get a free t-shirt in college? I would have probably wound up living in whatever town my crappy old car broke down in for good, panhandling for money and sleeping in the backseat with all my wordly belongings until I got lucky and found a job or got unlucky and got into trouble. Which honestly would have been more likely for me at the time. Because guess who, in addition to losing her job, had lost the ability to afford health-insurance and therefore her ability to afford her prescription? Yeah. This girl. That's just how you want to find yourself -- trapped with no money, a broken-down car, no job, and no meds, in some random town where you don't know a soul.

Doesn't happen to anyone, you say? Damn near happened to me, and I'm a middle-class, college-graduate girl from the suburbs who you'd expect to have a safety net. Thank fuck I did have one, or who knows what would have happened to me.

Shit happens, dude, and it happens to young people just like it happens to "adults". I'm thankful all the time that I'm lucky enough to have a good relationship with my parents, and that they were in a position to let me come back home until I got back on my feet -- one year out of college.

TL&DR; Word. People always assume that because you're young and/or educated and/or able-bodied you should be just fine, but it's never a guarantee. Luck and timing play a *big* part in these things and it makes me super angry when people deny that.

[(Anonymous)]

good luck