I hate being a grown-up

Seriously.  No one prepares you for this in college.  Oh yeah, everyone talks about it, everyone warns you, but no one actually prepares you for it!  I don’t thing there is any way to prepare yourself for it.  And that sucks.  I thought I was prepared.  I had bills in college, working minimum wage for minimum hours.  True I didn’t have tons of bills but I had bills.  I was used to being broke and living on ramen for weeks on end.

This is a whole new level.

I got paid.  Less than $200.  Not much less, but less all the same and a huge difference when compared to the $220-250 that I’m used to making.  I have $150 bill to pay this week.  I have $120 bill to pay next week, on the same hours, so the same paycheck, roughly.  I have to put gas in the car so that’s at least $20, should be $40 for a full tank but I can’t even afford that.  I wanted to buy some stuff at work today, maybe $10 in stuff…not gonna happen I think.  It was simple stuff too, clearance, like a hairbrush and some nail polish.  Now I don’t thing so.

I took a wellness survey for the pharmacy as part of our benefits management and it told me to eat better.  My immediate response was the urge to forward the results to corporate with the message "Then pay me better".  I can’t afford to eat healthy when all I can afford to eat is ramen noodles.  Duh.  The recommended serving of fruit and vegetables is 5 a day, I’m lucky to get in 1, of either variety.  Today I had an apple for breakfast.  I’m still hungry but I don’t have an option.  I can’t afford to go out and buy all this fruit and vegetables and meats and crap that a normal person is supposed to eat.  For starters, I can’t fucking AFFORD it.  Add to that the fact that my family would eat it all before I got to anyway and you have a recipe for unhealthy.  Sorry.

I am living hand-to-mouth, literally.  I may have to take an extension for May on my car payment because of the crappy hours I’ve gotten at the store the last few weeks and since we’re closed on Easter and I normally work on Sundays I got screwed on that too.  I’ve got so much up in the air right now and so much I’m trying to take care of sometimes that I feel like I’m losing my mind.

How am I supposed to do it all?  I can’t possibly.  That’s the answer I keep getting.  That I CAN’T do it.  I know there has to be a way but I just can’t find it.  Budgeting doesn’t work if you don’t have money to budget in the first place, which is my problem.

It’s almost 11am.  I work at 2pm.  I  really want to go for a run but my ankles have been killing me this week, probably the weather.  We’ve been threatened with rain all week, even on the balmy, sunny spring days, they’ve said it was supposed to rain and it’s had moments when it looked like it would.  I like running.  I guess it feels like I’m running away from my problems, at least temporarily.  Yeah, I’m a coward.  I hate conflict, I hate negativity, I avoid it whenever possible, which is weird because I have a confrontational writing style I think.  I write about all the confrontation I would like to have happen, the snappy come-backs and witty rejoinders.  Reality: I never say that kind of stuff.  

Writing is my vent, it’s where I let it all out.

It hasn’t been helping lately which is I guess why I haven’t been writing as much.

Maybe I will go take a walk at least.

Xx