Hello to everyone,
I’m Brian, I live in Winnipeg, Canada. I am a teaching professional, and I enjoy my career very much. I started a career change when I was 30 years old, earning a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees from university. I’m 53 now and still teaching at the same school where I began my career in education. Year after year those students keep my fire burning, they’re more special than they know.
I will do my best to provide a concise summary of why I’m writing this today, and not provide a novel. However, feel free to reach out if you may have questions.
In 2012, my wife and I had our first child, a beautiful daughter. She is our only child. In March of 2013, just three months after my daughter’s first birthday, her mom became ill very suddenly. After all these years there is still no definitive diagnosis, but she manages through each day. In the beginning, my wife was mostly bedridden. She was a teacher as well. She had such passion for teaching, for life, and led an active and healthy lifestyle. Her life has not been like that since March of 2013. All my daughter knows is mom being unwell, she doesn’t have any idea of mom used to be like. Anyway, for the next five years I took care of my wife and my daughter, working at school everyday, and doing whatever else it took to make life as best as it could be. Like I mentioned, she manages through each day but has not been in the classroom since. She lives on permanent disability from the Canadian Government and our teacher disability benefits. It’s approximately 80% of what her 2013 salary was. No increases for cost of living or the sort. Unfortunately this all took a toll on our marriage. We separated in September of 2018 very amicably. We are still great friends, I still help her out as much as I can. It’s not like we hated one another, we just drifted apart, so I see nothing wrong with helping in whatever I can. Besides, we have a daughter to raise, and she is the most important part of our lives. My ex-wife lives in our home, I have my own place to live, and we co-parent our girl 50/50. I have sacrificed so much in the past nine years (perhaps sacrificed is not the best term), and things are piling up on me to the point where I’m not sure how much longer I can survive. We are not selling that house. She lives there, she needs to live somewhere, and it’s familiar for our daughter who is now 10 years old. I don’t want anything. It would create a tremendous amount of uncertain stress for everyone, so in short, she keeps the house.
I’m unsure if what I’ve written so far is difficult or not to follow, it’s easy for me because I’ve been living this. So has my ex-wife and daughter. They’re not exempt from the hardships.
I will move along and outline what is currently going on these days. I find “this”, having to ask or beg, extremely difficult. I’m a modest and humble man, and also fiercely proud. Posting this, in the hopes that someone who doesn’t know me will help me out, is difficult. At this moment I have no other options.
Through the almost four years of separation I have accrued some debt. No different from anyone else. I’ve also worked hard at maintaining a good credit score. But that does not do any good for me now. A few months back the timing chain on my vehicle broke. It’s a 2007 VW suv, and in order to make that repair, and possibly others the chain may have caused, the engine and transmission need to be removed. This is a minimum $3000+ job. Now, I’m very handy, but I have nowhere to attempt to give this a go at the repairs. I do not have $3000, and if I did, I would still try to save that money and try at it myself first. We’ll, I have no room on my credit card, I am perpetually in overdraft with my bank account, I can’t get a loan for repairs or possibly to purchase another vehicle either. That’s because I’m still tied to the mortgage for my ex-wifes home. When we separated in September of 2018, the mortgage renewal was up that December. There was no way that she was able to take on the house with just her disability benefits, so I resigned with her for another five years so that she and my girl could continue living there. Now even though she does take care of all things financially regarding the house, that debt reflects upon me. As I live elsewhere and pay rent for myself and my daughter when she’s with me, and all the other personal debt I have, I’m unable to qualify for help from the bank. I am stuck. My car has been sitting in my in-laws garage, and I’m borrowing a car, for which both of those will have to end at some point. Especially the past two months, I’m unable to go anywhere with my daughter, or get her some things she needs, or even be able to afford groceries. I keep a home for her with me, make my debt payments on time, I provide spousal support and child support, and that’s everything I have. Every month. Over the last few years I’ve had to deplete all of what little I had in RSP’s. That option is gone as well. I’m sure there will be people who will say for me to suck it up, deal with it, things will get better, maybe even that I’m a loser of some sort. I’ve been doing this for a long time; I’m physically tired, I’m mentally worn out, and I’m not close to being all of what I should be. It’s hard to fake it everyday. My girl sees it in me. A few weeks ago out of the blue she asked me why I’m so sad? At that moment, I didn’t feel sad, or so I thought. I would have guessed I looked fine, normal. Apparently not when a 10 year old can clearly call you out.
I can tell I’m just rambling on, so I’ll leave it there. If anyone out there reads this and has questions or would like more information please don’t hesitate to get in contact with me.
Thank you for your time and for reading. I need some kind of relief. I don’t know what will help me, I’m too proud to suggest anything.
I’m very appreciative,
Brian
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