Welcome to my world, now would be a good time to run.

Well here goes my intro to the blogging world.  I'm hopping that this process will be good for me at the very least but it would be nice to think at some point I may touch someone else in a good way... Not THAT kind of good way, sheesh.

My name is Kirsten, I'm a thirty something living in Colorado with a husband, a dog, and a ferret.  I love fiber arts (crochet, knitting, weaving, spinning) and I love painting.  I'm into anime, Doctor Who, and cooking.  I also happen to have PTSD and until recently I still managed to enjoy life and be a fairly positive person.

Things have been on a downward spiral though, as best I can figure I must have been the most horrible person ever in my past life and now I'm paying for it.  So for those of you who are meeting me for the first time let' review, and please keep in mind I'm normally a POSITIVE person.  I don't enjoy harping on every little thing.  I am hoping that doing a little harping here might do me some good.

Okay so let's go back about a year to the end of 2009.  I had a very nice job doing tech support for Apple.  I had my nice little house and my nice little family and things were just on track.  Then I started noticing I was having a harder and harder time doing my job, upset customers were starting to make me upset. (Keeping in mind I had done some form of tech support or other for over 10 years so this was nothing new.)  I would get highly angry or very depressed and these reactions kept getting stronger and lasting longer.  I finally got taken into the doctor by the hubby when I had a nervous breakdown at work.  After some consultation with a specialist I learned that I was suffering from PTSD due to child abuse I had suffered, apparently my brain decided it had enough of pushing past it and threw in the towel.  I struggled for a while to keep working while I was getting treated but it finally just got to be too much and the choice was quit or maybe do something I'd regret so I quit.

I have to say at this point it had seemed like the right thing to do.  I got work at a local yarn shop which was a dream come true even if it was only one day a week and I was also working part time at a friends clothing store. Sadly we were not pulling in enough income to cover our bills from this, my husband had tried to protect me in my fragile mental state by telling me things were covered but we were starting to rely a bit too much on credit.  Still I was hoping to expand my business of teaching fiber arts classes and selling my homemade items online and we might have been okay but then the cascade started.

My husband and I both landed in the hospital about 1/4 of the way into the year.  My fabulously clutzy nature led to a broken foot when I was trying to save or stuff in our basement.  Yeah the hot water heater went and the drain failed, flood, awesome.  Then the dentist informed me I needed major dental work done (we still haven't gotten around to handling that) shortly after which I lost the part time job because my poor friend had to close her store.  I started really job hunting at this point, hoping to find something low key to pay our bills and get us on our feet.  Between all my tech support skills I no longer want to use and a master's degree that makes me "over qualified" I was having no luck.  I was STILL being a positive cheerleader, everything little thing is gonna be allright.... yeeeeaaahhhhh......

Well hello there October, what have you got in store for me?  This by the way dear readers is where you might want to look away, to find something else to read about, don't say I didn't warn you.

I was finally able to get hired for a job but it was lot, um, the most socially acceptable, the day before I was set to start it my life just fell apart.  My mother died very suddenly in her sleep, no warning, I'm the lucky person who found her, then the new job decided not to wait for me, I accidentally backed into my husbands car with my own, he had to go back to the hospital with a life threatening infection and I re-broke my foot worse, all within about 1 week.

I will admit my positive nature started to fail me at this point.  It has been a little less than a month and I have still not been able to find work so I feel like I'm causing the slow financial downfall of my household.  My depression is back and worse than ever and I can't afford treatment.  I don't qualify for any kind of benefits that I can find either so help there.  For loans or other help we are in that special place of either making too much or not enough or having too much or too little debt.

My dear sweet sister gave me a little gift while she was out for our mom's funeral.  It is the little item on my blog title and at this point one of the only things left that still strikes me as kinda funny.  Happy Gum For Your Crappy life.  I only ate one piece so far, kinda reminds me of juicy fruit.  This is the kinda thing I normally would royally crack up at.  I thought it would make the best blog title ever for someone like me so I wrote the most excellent company that makes it: http://www.blueq.com/ and they said I could use the image.  See they rock, and there is one good thing.

Now don't get me wrong I'm well aware lots of folks out there have things even worse than I do.  I don't have some false sense of ego that makes me think I should be immune to all this sort of stuff it is just that I'm really starting to feel myself lose it.  I can feel the "bad things" starting to win and I've really kind of run out of ideas on how to make things better.  I am using this as a scrap of hope, perhaps as I write about what is going on I'll get a new perspective, maybe I'll figure something out I hadn't before.  Maybe someone will read this and take pitty on me and give me a job, lol.  Maybe someone else who does have it bad will read this and know they are not alone (good) or someone who has it good will read it and realize that and appreciate their situation more (better).  Maybe I will manage to find some solutions and writing about it will help someone else (best).  I certainly don't have any answers right now, I'm just kinda a lost kid in the world at the moment.  Let's hope the gum works.