I Do Not Like What My Life Has Become

    I woke up today feeling horrid. A few weeks ago things were looking up for me because I was employed. During the interview process I was told I was going to be hired for my management experience. I was assured that there would be no physical labor. I was completely up front with the owner of this business when I told him that I can no longer perform physically labor.

   So after a couple of days of beating myself to death trying to keep a job the boss tells me that I need to pick up the pace.  I told him that he needed more people and I was giving him everything I had. Well that was the end of that job and I spent the next week barely able to walk.  In my younger days I could work. In my younger days I could work circles around anyone I knew and it was a great source of pride for me.  I was told multiple times that I should work smarter not harder but I was always told hard work and perseverance would pay off. 

   Here I am at 42 years old and I can only aspire to perhaps a part time job at a fast food place. All of the skills that I have are useless to me. I went from being able to build a house starting with nothing but a piece of land to a broken shell of a man trying just to survive. The down side of the whole part time job thing is I live too far away and cannot afford the fuel to get there and I cannot afford to move. So here I sit in noplaceville north dakota wondering what purpose I serve.  I wonder how I am ever going to move back to where I am from fifteen hundred miles so I can meet my grand kids. I have a grand daughter who will be 4 years old in a little over a week and I have not once held her. I have a grand son who was born this last september and I of course have not met him either.

   So here I sit in a trailer with a roof that leaks in 2 places that I cannot afford to fix. This trailer is located on land rented from the "city" that I am always late paying because I have no idea where or when the money is going to come from. Yesterday I took my SBD and began the transfer process so that I can pay the electric bill. That is the only shining thing in my life at the moment. I have my health such as it is and the love of a woman that I do not deserve.  I cannot collect welfare but I do get food stamps so at least I can eat.  When I ran my own construction business I thought I had the world at my finger tips. When the economy fell so did my business and my health followed.  Now years later I am just waiting for an opportunity to be the man I once was. I am trying to figure out what it is that I can do to be the provider once again.  I have no answers but I have hope.