TrashTierDaddy

I made $11-18 working various jobs from ages 16-25. Thought I was king of the world making that money at my age. But all the jobs were manual labor jobs, so here I am at 27, unemployed with so much back pain I need about 5 minutes to get sitting upright in the morning. My shoulder is so blown out that I can’t lift it above my head and my knees can tell me when it’s going to rain. I got swept into that mindset of “working hard is more honorable than workmans comp” and tried to never make a fuss over things. Now I look at my life and wonder why I gave up so much to help people get rich who probably don’t even remember my name. Life is weird.

I apologize in advance if this is too loaded of a question.

As an officer yourself, what is your opinion on the current tension growing in the US between police and civilians/BLM movement? I only ask because I know our countries are so different in terms of policing, but compassion and human decency aren’t bound by borders. To be honest, it was the way you answered the question about trainspotting that makes me curious. I don’t personally hear of many officers that speak the way you did about addiction, and to be honest I got emotional reading your reply having grown up around family struggling with addiction.

I know it’ll sound dramatic to some, but I honestly can’t see my life as anything other than ruined. I was struggling before the pandemic, but now I’m just drowning. My partner does pretty well as a tattoo artist, but that’s taken a huge hit since medical supplies are super expensive if/when you’re able to find them and people aren’t willing to travel for work anymore either. We’re trying to get out of here to a better town to live, but our families brought us here in the early 2000’s and then moved away when the local economy tanked and just left us here. So now we’ve been fighting an uphill battle for 6 years to try and save up to leave. People have given us the typical “just sell everything and leave” bullshit as if it isn’t 120+ here in the summer. It’s just hard when you literally don’t know what else to do. I personally don’t own anything anymore. I’ve sold everything I’ve owned to help keep some money coming in the last year, everything in our house belongs to my partner. I do the best I can, I maintain the house, do the grocery shopping, deal with bills/payments and balance my partners books and handle appointments, so it isn’t like I just sit on my ass and do nothing, but no one in my town is willing to work with me in a job or the positions are all filled already.

I don’t really even know where this is going anymore, I’m just kind ranting about how annoyed I am at having to exist.

I live in a small city in Arizona (hope you’re ready for these summer digits) have been here for 16 years. I’m 27, I have refused to speak to my family for 2.5 years now after realizing how much they would manipulate me to do hours/days of work for free and often eating the cost of materials myself. When confronting them and stating how I felt and why I think I feel that way, they began to literally mock me, and started laughing saying I could never understand what it meant to be a parent after I said “I just think it’s the parents job to love their kid and not guilt them over providing food and house to live in”. That’s stuck with me since that day, and since I’m in a small shit town, my only option for any mental health is the local Mohave mental health office, which I have equally bad experiences with. What can someone do when they have no money (pandemic) and no real options for local mental health? I want to leave this town but the job opportunity here is fast food or nothing and I can’t afford to pay my bills on that let alone save to move. Anytime I try to learn something new or do something on the side to make money I get discouraged and just give up and then occupy myself with something else so I don’t have to think about how bad I feel inside for failing something else. I just don’t know what to do anymore and I feel like my entire life is one giant play and I have to put on so many different acts and faces just to be able to exist around people without everyone talking to me like I belong in an insane asylum.