I want to give up.

You may have noticed a negative trend of late in the posts that involve the real world in general and my life in particular.

That trend continues unabated.

My mother stopped by, that was filled with stress.  Then my sister stopped by.  The good news: she has her son back, though on some sort of probationary status where they can show up any time for the next month and decide whether they like the conditions or not.  If I understood correctly.

As always, seeing her was stressful.

She broke my washing machine.

What followed was a prolonged period of trying to pry part of it open with two screwdrivers while I tried to remove the broken part with pliers.

That failed.

Eventually a combination of spoon and pliers was able to get things out and I set to work supergluing it back together again.  Part of me wants to say, "That's right, my washing machine is held together by superglue," but that would be a lie.  It isn't held together.  After people who don't live here managed to fuck it up for an extended period, the bottom hinge of the door rusted through.  Said people who don't live here (my sister, my father) also managed to break the handle off the door.

So now you open it by sticking your finger in one of the holes where it used to be, and I don't like to leave it open for long because it's hanging on one hinge.  When it's closed gravity mostly keeps it in place.  In fact, even with the rusted out hinge and the part that I have to periodically superglue, it does a better job now when I use it than it did fully intact when people who don't live here used it.

I hope that's still the case, but in getting the piece of the part out of the place it was stuck in something broke off from somewhere and for all I know that will prevent it from working.  I'm giving the glue time to dry, you see, so I haven't had a chance to see if it still works.

But this is all set up.

After retrieving the piece of the part it naturally had to be superglued back into place because the machine won't work without it.  Superglue dripped onto my skirt in the process.  The last of three skirts identical in all but color.  The only one without holes that makes it virtually unwearable.

Right now I'm, wearing the purple one that was eaten by a bicycle.  It is, definitively, not acceptable clothing for wearing anywhere that other people will show up.

Which brings me to the point.  Or rather the thing that illustrates a deeper point.

I don't have fucking clothes.  Lonespark has given me a couple of skirts.  I have, I think, three pairs of pants.  Lonespark has a very negative view of the situation with my shirts because they tend to have holes where they shouldn't.

For the most part, I don't have fucking clothes.

I don't have money with which to buy clothes.

My mother showing up brought the money thing back to the front of my mind.  Getting superglue on a skirt might not have brought it up otherwise.

I was always riding on the edge of collapse anyway.  Always just barely making it through.  With the reduction in SSI and the loss of food stamps I now have $400 dollars a month less to work with.

I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do.

I have some reserve from getting more in donations to pay for the boiler than the boiler actually cost.

That might get me through a month or two.  Then we come back to: I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do.  I just don't.

I want to break down and cry but the tears never come.

I'm going to need to go food shopping soon, I'm basically down to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I finished of the tuna today.  That's not horrific or anything.  I remember a time when I just had jelly.  It's not very useful without bread.  I remember other times when I just had peanut butter.

But food shopping.  Money to come from not from food money, but from the small surplus I have that might never be replenished.  That same surplus will be quickly spent making up for the loss in SSI as soon as the first bills of next month come due.

Unless I find a solution, I'm screwed in a couple of months anyway, I certainly don't have enough to pay on clothing when I can keep on wearing shit with holes in it, or stained from superglue and god knows what else.

And so we come around to this point again.  I don't have presentable clothes.  I don't have money to buy clothes.

Even with everything that's been going wrong, today started out as reasonably good.  I remembered to take my medication and I ate and everything.

But reality has come knocking and brought me back down.

I just want to give up.  I want to close my eyes and have the world disappear.

-

I stopped.  It was the kind of stopping where if you don't force yourself to do something you might end up losing hours to mindless zoning out.  Not wanting to lose hours, I forced myself to stand up and walk around.  I ended up going down stairs to check on the washing machine.  The glue had plenty of time to dry.

The part that broke off while I was extracting the piece of the other part with pliers was what the machine used to detect if the door was closed.  Without it, the machine always thinks the door is open.  It won't run with the door open (for good reason) which means that my washing machine no longer works.

Oh joy.

-

Here is the last point I wanted to hit before I slumped down physically and emotionally and got into a state where I was worried about zoning the day away:

Oil is low.

I might have enough money to fill it back up.  It'd totally drain my surplus.  No money for food.  No money for trying to fill the $200 hole that the cut down SSI leaves me with.

Of course, if I don't refill the oil then I could run out of heat.  I've got a brand new boiler, it would be a waste to let it freeze and crack in its very first spring.

Fucking money: I don't have it.