spare change?

I've always found it painful to see a homeless person. Something about seeing a once beautiful human being reduced to the shame of dirty clothes and asking for change breaks my heart.But I always saw them as a "them" not an "us".

And now I realize just how close that state of being is, for anyone really. A lost job, a foreclosure, a natural disaster, a mental or emotional breakdown....and that could be you or me. In fact, I'm already there, but instead of shaking my can for spare change, I go from one friend to the next asking for two thousand bucks to get through this month, or a thousand to fix the car and on and on. Thank you friends. Thank you for not abandoning me while I'm down. Thank you for keeping me from the freeway off ramp.

And now, the homeless, I see them as me, my brothers and sisters in this struggle for survival, just a few steps ahead of me on the road to decline, or a few steps behind me on the road to recovery...

it came today

the foreclosure notice arrived in my mail today. been praying against hope and hoping against prayer that those bastards wouldn't catch up with me. they did. just as i was about to join a class action law suit to sue the mofos for pho-modifying my loan and ruining my credit. It's been a game of chicken, and I guess I'm the chicken, a damn dead road kill chicken.

I'm completely out of money. I bought groceries on credit today. Each of my credit cards (4) have about $200-$400 credit lines available. My sister asked for the 2 months rent I owe her. I don't have it.

Smile and live another day.

its about the journey, not the destination...

...or so I keep telling myself as I sift through the complexities of seeing a married man. Although he leaves it as an open question, I know in my gut that he will never leave his wife, after 20+ years. But I stay by his side anyway. Why? Well, he gives me everything I want and need from a man--except for a future. And I could do with some more sex, but thats always the case with me. He actually gives me more time, love, attention, and support than any man I have dated since I became a mom, a single single-mom.

Moms shouldn't have to date, it really doesn't make any biological or physiological sense, not that I really know what those big science words mean but you get the gist. The very act of becoming a mother should mean that you have a partner, children need two parents and parents need each other. The focus turns inward, raising our family, nurturing our tribe, and its a lot of damn work. Bur when you are a single and a mother (and with an overactive libido) you have to turn outward to find partners, men, mates...and now your energy is pulled in opposite directions. I hate it. I hate dating. Maybe thats why I'm clinging to this married man, 20 years my senior, well that and he's fabulous. But being with him keeps me out of the market, off the scene, I can pretend we are a family, him, me and my daughter, existing inside my own little fantasy world.