I'm still cranky and sorta feeling sorry for myself lately; but having found out about the plights of a couple of the girls I work with, I feel better.
One of them found out about a month ago that her husband had been sleeping with someone he works with for the last six months. She has a son with her first husband (who also cheated on her), a daughter with this douchebag, and he has two kids from his first wife too--so this upset a lot of lives. After a few weeks of not knowing what to do but not moving out, he found her copies of applications for public housing assistance that she filed when she first found out .... and the bastard kicked her out of their house. He cheats on her, and he kicks her out of the house. I can't believe the balls on him. She's living with her parents now and driving to Denver every other day because her first husband can't keep their son all the time, while trying to figure out what to do for money since she did daycare from home and can't do that now.
Another girl is trying to move somewhere too--she has two sons with two different fathers, and recently moved in with a third boyfriend. She hadn't known him very long, but felt like she didn't have a choice. Her second baby's daddy had dumped her, but they were still living together until he decided that he was moving in with the girl it turned out he'd been cheating on her with before breaking up with her. She couldn't come up with money for her own place that fast, so she moved back to her parents'. A week later, they kicked her out--said the kids could stay, but she had to go. I don't know the whole story on that, but she ended up moving in with this new guy, who also has a kid. For a couple of weeks things were good; then he started getting weird. Still, she had everyone at work horrified because she was talking about marrying this guy already. Now apparently they've essentially split up but have co-signed a lease until the end of November, and he doesn't know she's lying about how much money she makes every night so she can save up money for moving.
And then there's another girl who moved here from Indiana with her boyfriend, because he was moving back to be with his kids. So she and her boyfriend live in a house with the three kids, and his ex-wife and her new husband. They're feeding the kids with food stamps and other government assistance; the other day she was eating some food that was cooked by mistake and said it was the first time she'd eaten that day because they had to save the food for the kids. I don't know exactly why; she doesn't like to talk about it.
The general manager is a single mother; another of the bartenders is too. Another bartender has been living with her boyfriend (who used to beat her, supposedly he's stopped) for about ten years, and a couple of months ago he got a job for the first time in five years (she'd been supporting them both while going to school full time). Etc. etc. At least I don't have kids depending on me; I'm not stuck living with someone who treats me badly; I may be scrambling for next month's rent, but I'm not at the end of my rope yet.
I know it's trite, but there's always someone worse off. But at the time, it doesn't diminish the anguish you can feel with your own situation. Not really sure where this comment is supposed to go but... there you go. (!)
That's very true, about not diminishing your situation. If it makes you feel better to think that you're not as bad off as somebody else, great, just don't minimize your own experience. <3
What always got me through the rough times was what my late best friend used to do. When things were looking bad, she would say "How could this be worse?" and start listing all the things that would make the situation worse and say "Nope, that's not happening, nope that's not happening" for each thing she listed as making the situation worse.
It got to be a habit with us, and we could list the most ridiculous things that could go wrong and make it worse (whatever "it" was) and then we'd end up laughing and saying it wasn't as bad as we thought after all (laughter is better than tears any day, in my book). It allowed us to get through many a surgery that she wasn't given good odds on surviving, and we got through many of her episodes of self-harm this way (and it helped a lot when my son ran away from home at the age of 16).
It didn't dim the reality of the bad situation we were in at the time, but it did make it more bearable by knowing that it could have been worse than it was (which is kinda what you're doing when you see that others have problems too, and those problems are bigger than the ones you're having).