Dear Stranger,
I am a 36-year-old single father of three teenage daughters. I have never been in this position before, and if you are reading this, thank you, even if you do not donate. I have been raising my children by myself since my youngest was 3 months old, she is 11 years old now. When I saw by myself, I truly mean that, their mother I believe suffered from postpartum depression left 3 months after we had our last child together. She went on to go down a rough road of addiction and we have not heard from her in 6 years. Their mother’s side of the family has no contact, and I would not even know where to begin to look for them. My side of the family is nonexistent, my mother passed away in 2007 just four days before I found out I was going to be a father for the first time. My brother is on and out of jail, and the one time I tried to help him as well as have him help me, he moved in with me to help with my kids while I worked full time and also attended college part time. He sold drugs from my house, and I was busy with work, school, and my children when I was home, I was just to blind or maybe just to stupid to see it. The police kicked in my door and arrested him in front of my kids while I was in class one day. When I talked to my children to make sure they understood what had happened, my oldest came forth to inform me she was glad he was going to be gone. She told me that he would always be sleeping leaving her at the age of 5 to take care of her sisters, and that if they woke him up, he would awake in rage and hit them. Needless to say, I have not spoken with my brother since. My father has always treated me as if I did not matter and he has always been focused on my brother more. I have no proof of this, but I am pretty sure my mother cheated on my dad, and he does not believe I am his child as that’s how I feel he has treated me my whole life. He has never even attempted to get to know my children. With all this all my children and myself have had is each other, they don’t know what it is like to even say “Hey grandma” or “Hey grandpa”. Now I am not telling you all this for you to take pity on me or to pull at your heart strings, I am telling you this because even with all that I have always maintained, always managed to provide all I could. I have always kept a full-time job, as a matter of fact I was with the same local restaurant for 14 of the last 17 years. The family I worked for helped me out a lot as far as being understanding of my situation and ensuring me that my job was safe even during times when I would have to miss work due to children being sick or working with my schedule, so I never had to miss a single milestone. I returned that energy by truly caring about that restaurant as if it were my own. They were never able to pay me the best being a small business, but they truly showed they cared. They also taught me a great deal about the restaurant industry, which I hope to use to open my own one day. Sadly, due to Covid they were forced to close their doors which was the start of the downhill spiral that has me here writing this. With all this being said I don’t want someone to pity me, I just need someone to believe in me enough to help me get back to even. After the restaurant closed it has just been set back after set back. I caught covid and that had me down for a solid month, not even a month after I feel better from that I broke my ankle. At this point I am behind on everything, but I did get a job training to be a manager at a Pizza Hut that I got to work for 2 weeks after my ankle healed. Then my car broke down and none of it was covered under warrantee, I had no way to get to and from work, so I lost that job. That leads us to where I am at now, I am over $3000 behind in rent, water, gas, electric could all get shut off any day and honestly, I just feel lost and don’t know what to do. I have gone to local organizations that help with things like this but have been told at almost every turn they are out of funding. I found this website after googling “Is there anyone that can help me”. Again, please don’t read this as I am just writing out a sob story, please read it as a man, a father not knowing where to go or what to do, and as I said just reaching out for anyone to believe in me to reach back and help or give guidance to get me back on track. Thank you and God bless.
Sincerely,
A father in need of belief
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