One year.

I'm a few days early with this, but I don't ever know when I'll have time to do this since I share this computer with the rest of the family, so I'm taking opportunity as it presents itself.  This week, we will hit one year that Thak has been out of the Army.  Wow.  What a year it has been.

What seemed like a great opportunity at BMW quickly showed itself to be anything but.  We're still not sure how anyone makes a living as a mechanic, without living in their parents' basement for their entire lives, but some people do.  We couldn't afford to stick around long enough to figure out the how and why of that for ourselves.  Thak loved his job at BMW, and hung on for as long as possible, but it was never going to work out.  By the time he got the job he has now, I had seen and done things that I never had imagined would ever happen to me.  There was a lot that was surprising about all this, and a lot that wasn't.

I never knew what it was like to have utilities shut off, face the possibility of losing my house every month, and stress daily about if I'd have enough gas to get my kid to and from school, and about putting food on the table.  I never thought I would have to eat the horrible foods that WIC gives, that these things would make the difference between having something to eat and going hungry.  I never knew that I would at some point be green with envy every time some friend mentioned going grocery shopping, because I could not afford groceries. 

One thing I didn't anticipate was how out of touch friends become when you lose your position in life.  When I was an NCO's wife, I had friends who were also NCOs' wives.  We were peers.  We had similar lives.  Then my husband decided he didn't want to do that anymore, and all of a sudden, my friends didn't understand me at all.  It's not that they're bad people.  They just plain didn't get it.  In a lot of ways, they still don't.  They're still good people, and they still don't get it.  It's just the way it is.  They know it, I know it, and we all accept it.  I just remember once, confiding in a friend that I didn't know how I was going to put food on the table that week, and she starts going through the Albertson's sale ad she'd gotten in the mail that day.  "Look, Anna!  Shrimp are only $5 a pound!" she said.  I just cried.  She thought I had $5, far less $5 to blow on something like shrimp.  Didn't she know $5 will buy 4 bags of beans, which stretch a lot farther than a pound of shrimp?  Well, no, she didn't know.  She thought she was helping.  That moment in the kitchen of my friend's duplex on post, showed me more clearly than anything, the disconnect that exists between military and civilian these days.  It's not malicious.  It's just pervasive.

Even more surprising than that, I'd say, is the way people treat you when you're poor.  There's this prevailing idea that poor people are stupid, or did something wrong to get that way, or something like that.  Everyone treats you like garbage.  That's the part I really didn't see coming.  I remember the first time our electricity got turned off.  The power company guy was at our door, and I was calling Thak (we still had phones at that point) to ask him what I should do.  He wasn't answering, because Thak has a tendency to assume that whatever I'm calling about can wait.  The power company guy is just standing there going, "Well, your bill wasn't paid. You need to pay it." and I didn't even know what to say.  I told him my husband had just gotten out of the Army, and was working at BMW, and not making much, and that we were doing our best.  Of course, that does nothing.  I just wanted him to know we weren't scum, and this isn't the way we do things in this family.  He walked around the side of the house, and turned our electricity off as I held 4-month-old Chai, and Erin and Orren watched.  On the way to BMW, I called a friend because I was so freaked out.  She suggested I beat Thak's ass and make him pay. (Yes, because that'll surely cause him to flag more hours...)  I arrived at BMW, and Thak called the power company.  They were total jerks to him, but did tell him how we could get our power back on.  We scrounged up the money (it was the last of our savings), and then sat in the dark until they came and turned our electricity back on.  By that time, we'd lost everything in the freezer, including 80 ounces of pumped breastmilk, and nearly a month's worth of food.  Anyone I told about that reminded me that it was my own fault for not paying the bill.

People assume that if you're going through hard times financially, that it's because you were stupid with your money, never because there's just simply not enough money.  We weren't stupid with our money when Thak was working at BMW.  I didn't even go visit friends much because I needed the gas it would take, to get Erin to school.  Sometimes me and the boys would spend the whole day on the same side of town as Erin's school just to conserve gas.  We lived on beans and rice, and whatever we could manage to make grow in that desert heat (mostly squash and peppers).  We weren't stupid with our money.  There just wasn't enough coming in.  We built a great life when Thak was in the Army, and then we had to watch it come crashing down when he got out.  Was this our fault?  Well, it was his, in a way, for refusing to continue with his career.  There was nothing I could do about that, though.  He left me no choice.  That is a risk every wife takes, like it or not.  It won't happen to some, and it will happen to others.  Just because it happened to me doesn't mean I'm stupid or irresponsible.

Really, it could happen to anyone.  With the downsizing of the Army, he may have been forced out anyway, being in an over strength MOS, and having a knee injury that does not respond to treatment.  It would have been better than this, of course.  The involuntary separation pay he would have received under those circumstances could have sustained our family for over a year. But for many people, it wouldn't be like that.  Soldiers who haven't served long don't get those big separation pays.  Soldiers who aren't injured don't get VA benefits (we're still working on it).  Anyone could find themselves in our situation.  It doesn't take being stupid. 

Things are getting better.  Thak's current job pays more than most jobs here in the US do these days.  Of course, it's still drastically less than he was bringing home in the Army (think of about a $12k a year pay cut, and that's about what it looks like.  It's actually not that big a pay cut.  It's just because we have to pay for benefits now, which we received for free in the Army.)  One thing you do learn in circumstances like these, is what is a necessity and what is not.  I'll never forget when we got our apartment, a military wife I know asked, "2 BR's really isn't much for a family of five.  Are you sure it's enough?"  I just shook my head at how out of touch with reality she really is.  In this economy, many people are not in a position to worry about if two bedrooms are enough.  It's more like, "Is it in decent condition, enough to be safe?  Is it in a safe neighborhood?  Can I afford it?"  If yes to all of the above, game on.  Did I ever see myself living this way?  No. Not even in my imagination did I ever see this happening, but it did happen, so we have to just do our best with it.

The last remnants of our old life remain in the form of our car payments, but once those are gone, and it won't be long, things will be a lot better.  We're making it work.  It isn't easy, but we're doing it.  The hardest part has been the way people treated us.  That's the hard part.  Beans and rice taste like shit after that's all you've eaten for months, and feeding your kids food that you know is full of pesticides and GMO's is hard to do with a clear conscience, but even that stuff is easier than being treated like trash because you don't have much money.  That was the truly shocking part.  People assume you're stupid, irresponsible, and all kinds of bad things.  Nobody ever thinks that you might just be a regular person, who is going through a difficult time.  I found that strange mostly because all I hear about on the news is how unemployment rates are through the roof, the stock market is down, foreclosures are up, and people are struggling.  If that is the case, then why is there still such stigma attached to it?  Why is there still the assumption that if you don't have enough money for some bill, it's because you blew it at the casino or on booze, when really, you spent it on gas to get your kid to school, or food for your family, or a copay at the doctor's office for your sick kid?

I guess the real lessons for this year are to never assume things about people.  Things aren't always what they appear, especially these days. Also, never pass up an opportunity to help if you can.  I can't tell you how much it would have meant to me if that friend, instead of shoving a sale ad in my face, would have opened her pantry and given me a box of pasta, or a can of tomatoes, or anything.  I don't fault her, but I did learn, don't ever pass up an opportunity to help someone.  It may make a bigger difference than you can imagine.  I also learned that necessities aren't always what you think they are.  Having lived in the military community for so long, I thought that at least a 3 BR house for a family my size was an absolute must, and that a 3-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl could never share a room.  Well, here we are, making it work in a 2 BR apartment.  Who'd have thought all it took was some bunk beds?  It's a lot more painless than I had imagined.  You just never know.

It's been a tough year, probably the toughest one of our lives, my life anyway.  I do think things will get a lot better, and they already are.  We're going to be fine.  Although it didn't look that way for a while, and we're not quite out of the woods yet, we are going to be fine.