Everybody has got a story, and I think that my story, although it may not be as painful as others, just may break your heart.

This is my story.  I am a 22 year old Nursing student and have been in school for several years now due to not having enough money and working to pay my tuition.  I am pursuing a BSN in Nursing with minors in Psychology and Biology.  My dream is to someday become a Dermatologist.  My family consists of my mom, sister and father.  My sister is 15, and my parents are in their 50s.  Although my sister is physically 15, because of special needs, she is psychologically at the age of 3.

From the time I was born until I lived in one bedroom with my father, mother and sister.  My sister is seven years younger than I am.  It was a struggle going through intermediate and high school with nothing.  We all shared one bed, one closet, one dresser, and one mirror.  There was not much to put in any of them but we made the best of it.  I thought that we were such a happy family throughout most of if, until high school.

During my senior year of high school I found out that my dad was cheating on my mom.  He was paying for her to have an abortion, engagement rings, Gucci bags (and other luxury brands) and many other things.  I was enraged.  My dad even wanted her to ride along with him, my mom and my sister to my graduation dinner (we did not have enough money to do much).  I was so enraged I simply did not want to have anyone come... so I said its okay, save the money and put it in my sister's bank account.  Before I found out who she was, I noticed that my dad would always pick up a woman while dropping me off to school.  Not too long after that, I found out it was her.  I was really mad and threw a fit, because I felt so stupid not to have known... and she was the reason that the celebration of my high school graduation was cancelled.  And also the reason that I started back up on a habit that I started in intermediate school... self mutilation.

After that I pulled myself together for my sister.  I did it for myself and for her.  My sister is currently 15, however, she functions at about the age of a 3 or 4 year old.  She is able to talk, use the bathroom and feed herself, however, it is all at the level of a 3 or 4 year old.  My sister is autistic and has slight mental retardation.  She is in special programs at school, and has improved since she was first diagnosed at around 6.  However, since my parents have been on negative terms, she has been throwing tantrums again.  Due to my sister's condition, when she wants something, she has to have it.  There is no other way around it, so we try to train her not to want it, but it is very difficult.  This goes for food as well, due to her condition, she simply likes to eat junk foods such as pizza and canned foods.  This can get pretty costly, and due to my dad we are unable to provide as much as we would like.

My father has accumulated numerous bills under his Macy's card, Sears card, and with various other agencies.  The whole day the phone rings with someone calling due to my dads debt.  He does not want to pay for it, and I believe it is because he does not have the money to do so.  He works as a housekeeper for a hospital, and used to have a home care patient.  However, because my dad dated another caregiver of his patient, and took his patient to her house and to the bar, he lost his that job.  Now we are struggling even more to make ends meet.  My dad has given one of his girlfriends a Macys credit card in his name, and she went crazy on it.  My dad's current minimum monthly payment for that card is close to $2000.  On his Sears card his minimum monthly payment is a little over $1000.  This does not include the phone bills, groceries, and other expenses that he pays for for his girlfriend.  I am surprised that she has not figured out that he has other girls on the side... but I guess with all the money and materialistic things she is getting it is not that it matters. 

On top of all the debt he gets into on his credit cards, he has paid for his girlfriend's family as well.  He has paid for his girlfriend's dental work as long as with her sister's dental work.  He has paid for his girlfriend and her daughter to go to the Philippines together, and gave them spending money.  He has paid for her daughther to have an abortion, and bought her a new laptop for school.  And recently, there has been a college educational institution calling about my dad having a loan with them that he just opened.  I can only assume that it is for his girlfriend's daughter!  I know it is not mine and no one else in the family goes to college!  And a whole bunch more!  And the most upsetting part is... my mom has only three top teeth, six or so bottom teeth, and he has never taken the time of day to even ask her to get her teeth fixed!  My mom has asked and begged him several times and he does not even flinch.  My dad has never given anything to my sister that was as expensive as a 2-way flight to the Philippines along with spending money... the most expensive thing that I remember him giving her was a $30 pair of shoes.  My dad has yet to give me something of that value as well... and what is more upsetting is he promised me a college education, and yet I am taking out a lot of student loans, have no money left in the bank, and am trying to work my way through college.  The reason that I work so hard to go to school is because I know that I need to help my mom and sister to get away from my dad.  My dad promised me a college education, but he is buying someone else's daughter a laptop and paying for their college education.  I have never received a laptop from my father...

I have been in college since 2005 working on my Bachelor's of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree with minors in Psychology and Biology.  I currently have a Grade Point Average of 3.3 and if I were to go to school full time, completely on loans, I would be expected to graduate by the end of Spring 2012.  The reason why it is taking so long is because I have to work to pay the bills.  I have to pay for my student loans, my credit card, the phone bills, and help my mom with the rent.  My dad only puts a portion of his paycheck into my mom and dad's joint checking account.  This makes things difficult because he usually only puts enough for only the rent and sometimes he is a few hundred dollars short.  Other times he simply does not put any money in there.  What is worse is he does not buy much groceries.  He purchases bread and rice.  So there is not much to eat, especially for my sister.  Therefore, this leaves me to pay for everything else.  My dad just keeps the rest of his earnings for himself, or for his girlfriends and their families... I am not to sure, all I know is that my mom, sister and I do not see it.  We are not able to afford anything that is not a necessity, and there are times that we cannot even afford the necessities.  If we need clothes or shoes, we go to the second hand stores such as "Savers" and "Goodwill".  Most of the time we struggle to even afford these things.  We do not have a bed, so we sleep on the floor with blankets covering the floor.  My sister is a special child, so I try to make her comfortable with pillows and some toys, but it is not much.  There are times where her skin is so cold and I cannot do much but try to warm her with my hands.  The same goes for my mom, she has lost so much weight since all of this daily turmoil that she freezes as well.  She has gone down to about 85lbs.  We do not have a washing machine, and water prices has gone so expensive so my mom walks about 3/4 of a mile with our laundry to the laundry mat, and carries the wet clothes back home to dry.  My mom is 4'9" and about 85lbs.  There are a lot of times that I run out of money trying to pay for all of these expenses and have to dip into my credit card, which is why I have never been able to pay it off.

My sister is a special child who needs special services, however, we do not have the money to fund them.  I wish I could, and I am hoping that by the time I graduate, take my board, and work as a nurse, that I can help her get the services she needs and gain the life that she deserves.  She has been born with conditions, and she does not deserve to live a life that wakes up with parental arguing, where she cannot have the basic things she needs to survive, the warmth of a bed to sleep on, new clothes that someone else has not worn, food to eat and most of all, overall happiness.  I do my best ot try to make all of this happen, but I do fall short because I do not have the money to make it happen.

On another note, I feel that my mom and I need to seek therapy.  My mom is going on a destructive cycle of not eating due to stress.  This is very bad because my sister relies on her to  aid her in her daily activites.  My mom tries to eat what little we have, but most of the time she just saves it for my sister or just does not have the will to eat.  I think that she needs to seek therapy to find hope and happiness and the will to survive so that we can fight all of these hardships and move on with our lives.  I think that I need to seek therapy because most days I can get through the day happily thinking about the positive things in life and because I know my mom and sister are counting on me.  Other days, it feels just like one bomb after another exploding on me and I just cannot take it.  Then I begin my cycle of self mutilation again.  I do not want to keep doing this because my mom and my sister count on me.  I
 especially want to see my sister live a better life so I want to seek therapy for my problem.  Unfortunately for my mom and I we do not have any money.

A few years ago I loaned a former acquaintance $1000 to help them get a car.  What happened was someone had screwed them over with their credit, so they were unable to get a car.  This person was in desperate need of one, and because they had a young child, I felt bad for them.  It was one of those things that I thought that they were more worse off then me, so I should help this person out.  I loaned them $1000 at the time, and allowed them to use my name and credit score to get the other $13000 to pay for their car.  I have never used this car.  Now, I found out that they have not been paying for the loan, and it has been three years.  The car was then reprocessed and they promised that they would pay for it.  This person even told me that "at least I'm not at a dead end job".  Well, according to the bank they keep quitting their jobs.  This does not work, they promised they would take care of it, instead they screw me over.  I have more debt added on to me, and repossession on my credit.  On top of that, the bank was going to file a lawsuit.  I did not want to have my name tarnished, therefore, I made a settlement with the bank.  I took out my whole savings account, what was left in my credit card, and my paycheck at that time and gave them a settlement of $1700 and $150/ month for the next three years.  This person is claiming to file bankruptcy as well.  Therefore, this person told me to file bankruptcy as well.  That is not fair, for me to file bankruptcy because they could not hold up their end of the deal.  I trusted this person and I lost a lot.  Now, I really am going to have a hard time paying for school, bills, necessities and taking care of my family.  I know it was stupid for me to let someone borrow my name so easily, but I was 19 and I thought that they would not screw me over, since they were already screwed up by someone else themselves.  They should know what its like well enough not to do it to someone else.  And yet I have not received any money from them to repay me that $1000 and I still have to pay the rest of the settlement.

My mom only has two top front teeth, and two in the back.  She only has like seven or eight bottom teeth.  They are all turning yellow and cracking.  I wish I could help her before she ends up with cancer, or some kind of disease, but I do not have the money.  I know shes in pain, and we do have insurance but we cannot afford to pay the co-payment.  She has not received a cleaning is like seven years or so.  My mom has gingivitis and needs to get things checked out, but what pains me even more is that my dad paid for his girlfriends to fix their teeth completely, and yet he lets my mom, the mother of his children, the person who took care of us during their whole marriage suffer through it.  On top of that my mom has glaucoma, and I am at high risk for it.  My mom needs to be maintaining medication in her eyes every day, but we cannot afford her medicine.  With insurance it still costs a lot and we cannot afford it.  I cannot let my mom go blind, and I am scared for her.  I do not know what will happen without her and I do not want that to happen.  My sister has special needs, and she relies on my mom to help her.  The even more difficult part is my sister usually only wants my mom to help her.  This causes the situation to get even more grave.  On top of that, my mom just took my sister to get her cholesterol and blood sugar tested.  My sister is obese, and the school wanted to have it done.  No one told us that insurance was not going to cover the diagnostic tests, so we took her to the doctor.  From the doctor's office she was refered the the laboratory.  The results came back negative for both tests, however, we incurred around $275 in diagnostic lab bills.  We do not know where we will get the money for that...

Lastly, at the end of last year I found out that my mom's dad has prostate cancer.  In addition, the cancer is in stage 4, meaning that it has metastisized to the rest of the body.  This means that the cancer has spread, and there is no certain amount of time left.  I would like to help with his comfort care and his end of life wishes.  In addition, I would also like to help with the bills that will be incurred, but I do not have the money to do so, please help.

How do I feel?  I feel very angry.  I feel like there is nothing I can do.  I feel like I have to play nice to my dad because even though he never gives us enough money to survive, he still gives us most of the money to pay for the roof over our heads.  I feel like I just want to yell at my dad's girlfriends at the top of my lungs and just tell them it is not fair... its just not fair.  I just want everything to be okay.  I do not think that I deserve this, I just want to make it through.  I just want to be happy.  I feel like I cannot cry no more, and there is just so much more to go through.  My sister is challenged, and my mom is in a lot of emotional turmoil and my friends just do not understand... I feel alone.  I feel like I am in the middle of the ocean, with wave after wave crashing down on me, and I cannot swim.  There is just so much in the world to be happy about, just seeing the sun shine in the morning is worth smiling for because I do not know when that might be taken away from me.  But despite all the world has to offer, sometimes I feel like I have to hide my eyes from the world, because along with all the happiness, there is a deep darkness in my life, one that I have been trying to light up for a while, but I just keep getting knocked back down.

In order to calm myself down, I run every now and then.  I am a much happier and calmer person this way.  I never want to get mad at my sister, I never want to be mad at my mom, I just want us to be happy.  But sometimes it is hard when there is no food, and I still have to go to school, work, and make grand attempts at taking care of the family and hold it together.  And what makes me feel more sad is that the toughest part of a divorce is the last year, the year that the parents are fighting the most.  I wake up to my parents arguing, complaining about each other, yelling, and then my sister starts yelling and throwing tantrums.  It affects her so bad.  She used to have her tantrums under control, but whenever my parents are fighting, it just throws her off.  I do not like that and it makes me so angry that it is what makes her condition difficult for her and for my mom.  My dad never takes care of her, although he lives under the same roof, so I have little to say about him.  I hate how it affects me, it makes me so mad, and once you start off the day angry, its so hard to stay positive especially when your back is up against the wall.  Parents should never stay together for the kids if this is how they are going to be in front of them.  It just makes it so much harder for the kids.  I hate what it does to me and my sister.  I know my mom would like to take us out of this environment, but she can't.  I just would really like to get us all out of this, but I do not have the funds to do so. 

I feel like Eminem got it right in his song "When I'm Gone" when he said these lyrics...
"Daddy it's me, help Mommy, her wrists are bleeding,"
But baby we're in Sweden, how did you get to Sweden?
"I followed you Daddy, you told me that you weren't leavin'
"You lied to me Dad, and now you make Mommy sad
"And I bought you this coin, it says 'Number One Dad'
"That's all I wanted, I just want to give you this coin
"I get the point - fine, me and Mommy are going"
But baby wait, "it's too late Dad, you made the choice
"Now go out there and show 'em that you love 'em more than us"

Please help my family and I get the things that we need.  I know that this is a lot to take in, and unfortunately it is the truth.  Everybody has got a story, and this is my story.  This is a story that breaks my heart every day knowing that there is not much that I can currently do to change the circumstances.  Please help my mom, sister and I get through these times.

Student loans: over $30000, $40/month in interest
Credit card: $3000
Settlement :$7000
Monthly Food, utilities, rent, gas: $1000 at least
Therapy, sister's services: ?
Divorce: $4000 minimum (alimony for my mom and child support for my sister and college money for me)
Mom and sister medical issues: ?
Grandfather's care: ?

Thank you for everything and best wishes to you in all your endeavors.