Confusing the Story.

I get annoyed sometimes. Especially when times are tough. Mostly, I get annoyed at people who try to tell me stories of how someone else survived and I can do it too! For example, my recruiter told me that another consultant lost her job in January, her husband's in February, AND they have 5 kids ranging in age from 15 to 1. But she stepped up her game and was able to support the family on her sales alone. Wow. If she can do it, I can too, right?

What she fails to see, or understand, is that we are not the same. They have older kids, and had older jobs. I am fairly certain they grossed more than 19,000 a year, combined. I don't even think Rudy and I make that much combined. They are people with houses and savings accounts, stocks, bonds, CDs and IRAs. They are people who have something to fall back on because they had the means to save in the first place. When you make as little as we do, there is no saving because there isn't anything to save. Every penny goes to rent and bills and food and diapers. If there is anything leftover, which rarely happens, we usually get something for Afton, like a toy, or a book. Or we go buy some lightbulbs, because everybody needs lightbulbs.

What I'm saying is, just because someone else had no job and had kids, doesn't mean we're the same story. We're not. We have nothing. Any little mishap could break us. Our windshield could break us. Because we are not the same story. And no one even bothers to consider what a story truly is. My story isn't done, but it feels like it, certainly.

If it wasn't for bad luck, we'd have no luck at all.