november

I'm so stressed. I'm so stressed and I have no time for the free therapy place at my school because I don't have a spare hour that coincides with their hours and I have no money for a copay for a therapy place outside of school right now and I'm tired of posting in the threads and on my tumblr and making the occasional sad facebook status. I need to rant but there's no one to rant to, and I feel guilty for ranting anyway, so I need an isolated place to talk about this.

I'm so fucking sick of feeling like I'm running in place. I'm so sick of having to constantly calculate where I'm at financially and when I can maybe get this thing or do this or whatever I want or need at any given time. Money is tight and it's going to be tight probably until my tax return in February (THREE MONTHS FROM NOW) unless I can somehow work a second job, but when do I have the time for that? Winter break, possibly, but what job is going to let me be there for a month and then quit? And do I really want to spend my only significant break time until summer working two jobs yet again? It's come down, as it has for the past 6 months, really, to mental health vs money, and everything is so up in the air. The work from home 2nd job that I applied for was the best option, but that was 25 mandatory hours that I was worried I couldn't handle, and every interview time they had was either during work or school, so I would have had to skip one or both of those, which wasn't an option, so now that's out completely. I want to get ahead financially but that looks like it won't be happening unless there's some unexpected windfall within the next few months besides my tax return and I hate that.

Everything is so fucking up in the air every damn day and I'm so tired of it. I want to know that I have a concrete plan but I have to keep shifting my goals and my plans because the ground under my feet is so unsteady and the ups and downs are so random. Nothing feels secure and everything feels like it's close to falling apart around me at all times and I feel like I have to be 100% on my game every day to just stay afloat. Not even get ahead, just stay in place.

I have so many goals I want to accomplish. I want to have a nice Christmas and I want to decorate the house a little and I want to get presents for my friends and pass my classes and have enough disposable income to actually buy new clothes, for one, or get some books or video games every so often, or pay for personal trainer sessions at the gym so I can start feeling more fit and like my workouts make an actual difference and so I can utilize the amazing gym facilities here while I'm a student and they're "free" (through segregated fees in tuition, but whatever). But all of these things take up time or they take up money and if I barely have enough to keep myself paying all my bills how will I have enough to do any of this? And these are such small goals, but they're goals that I've wanted to do for a while and expected to be able to do this year and so far I haven't been able to because I've been trying to balance literally everything else, and no matter how much my logical brain is like "hey, it's obviously okay, it's not like you're a lazy slacker doing nothing, you literally cannot do these things right now because you have to prioritize, you know, paying rent and eating food and passing classes and everything else over smaller things that you want to do but aren't necessarily as important in this current moment," I still feel like a failure for not being able to achieve my goals. And it makes me mad THAT I'm mad, and then it creates this feedback loop of anxiety and anger and feeling like I'm not moving forward or that I'm only moving forward in the smallest of ways. I just want to be able to live the life I want and it's frustrating to come up against problems that aren't in my control. Like, it's not like I can just WORK HARDER! Or WORK MORE! Because I'm already working hard and doing everything I possibly can in this time period, and I can't really work more because work already restricts hours depending on how many hours per week through the whole store they give to people. It's both slightly more comforting to know that a lot of this isn't really my fault, more the fault of the circumstances, and infuriating to know that a lot of this is out of my control, and that I'm really backed into a corner in a lot of ways and most solutions aren't really solutions. I can't out-think or hard-work myself into a better situation because I have to be in all of these situations. Like, all the solutions I could think of are things I literally cannot do.

-Get a second job? What time would I have to do that? And where would accept my limited hours that I would have to schedule around school and another job? And even if that was possible, I still need time for homework, and housework, and errands, and mental health time besides, and sleep, and that would effectively take up all of the limited time to do all of those things that I already have.
-Get a cheaper apartment? I can't exactly break a lease in the middle of it without any legal/credit score troubles. Besides, I can't leave my roommates hanging, and we've put in so much work over the past 6 months to make this place a home that it would basically be taking that progress and throwing it out to leave now.
-Go to school part-time instead? That means it would take longer to get my degree, fuck up this year's current financial aid (there are different rules for part time vs full time students), and cost more money in the long run because I would be at this school longer.
-Work longer hours? Not really up to me to decide. Plus, runs into the time constraints that the second job would run into.
-Sell my car? A good short term solution for money, maybe (I'd have to fix the back two windows, so that's a couple hundred-dollar investment already right there), but I need that car to get around the city currently, and after school I'd rather stick with a car that I know is reliable than go through the song and dance of trying to buy a used one that might nickel-and-dime me anyway, or buy a new car and put myself in car debt along with student loan debt.

Literally the only solution I have right now is that one of my friends could potentially be moving in with us and splitting the rent, but that hasn't even been discussed between me and my roommates yet - one of them knows the situation and the other is still ignorant, so tonight we're talking about it, but that's the only thing I can think of that would help, because it would split the rent, utilities and housework even further and make things easier. That's the only thing that would save me at this point that I can see, unless something unexpectedly good comes my way soon, and I'm really hoping that she'll move in and things will be easier. Even then, though, she can't pay her share of December rent, so for another month I'll basically be in the same position until January or even further depending on when potential roomie gets a job (she's looking, but so far I don't know if she's heard back or not).

I'm just tired of this and I want the semester to end. I want it to be Christmas or next year already so I can have a break from school and breathe and work longer and make more money and maybe have a second job or do something to get myself out of a hole and start moving ahead earlier than February. I want time to maybe focus on some of those personal goals I've had to put off just so I can feel like I'm actually doing something productive with my life besides school. I'm just fucking tired.