| Ash and Work. This is stressful and difficult. |
[Sep. 8th, 2009|09:46 am] |
We are in a situation at the moment. Well, a few different situations if you want to break it down.
Because of the economy Ricky's hours have been cut quite severely back for a few months now. We have been adding things up and cutting things back. We have come to see that even with tax credits, Job Seekers Allowance, and benefits, we cannot afford to live. We are short several hundred pound a month. We can't find that money with all the scrimping and saving in the world unless we get another credit card.
So, this means, Ricky has had to take voluntary redundancy. It is now Tuesday and his last day is Friday. He has worked there for 18 years. This is very emotional for me let alone him. He is upset about not seeing his mates anymore. He is upset about not being able to provide for his family. Which I told him silly because he most definitely is providing for us by sorting all this out. He is upset about having to live on benefits and stay at home all day. Basically, this is a huge change for all of us.
One of our options is to sell our house to the council then rent it back. Then housing benefit will pay the rent. On the face of it, it sounds great. Fuck yeah! We won't have to pay for fuck all and we still get to stay in our home! Plus, the council will sort out all the broken bits in the house! But it's not like that. There's something psychological about it all. It's the fact that we cannot pay for ourselves and this house will no longer belong to us. It's a whole new mindset. It won't be our house anymore. Can you understand that? But I'm sure in time I will get over it all. I am just afraid of change in general.
On top of all this...
Ash showed up unexpectedly the other night. Literally. We hadn't heard from her in weeks and weeks. Nothing. She then contacted us and visited a couple weekends in a row. She was fine. Nice to us, nice to Louis. Then one night, a couple weeks later, we get a phone call at about 9pm.
Ricky and I had been settled in for the night, Louis was asleep as well. The phone call was from his mother. Ashleigh's mother had phone her during a huge fight with Ash and the rest of the kids. Fuck knows why she phoned Ricky's mother, Thelma. Thelma is not in the best of shapes healthwise and this is not her shit to deal with. Anyway, on the phone, Thelma says Ash is on her way up to ours in a taxi with a bag packed. Fine... a few minutes later we get a phonecall from Ash's mother saying we need to get the money to pay the taxi. fuck sake. We have none on us at the moment so we have to break into the holiday money piggy bank. There were only a couple of notes in there and a whole rake of copper.
But now the piggy tin/bank is sitting on the kitchen side bashed open... it's very symbolic of everything going on. Copper splashed around, sharp edges, the words "berlin holiday money" torn in half.
So that night, Ash arrives. Clearly upset. Louis wakes up. We were not expecting this. I go in and comfort Ash, give her a big hug, tell her she can talk to me if she wants but that she doesn't have to. Ash talks to her dad instead when they go for a walk down to the garage. She tells him what the big fight was about.
Her mother has been drunk for days straight, has been nowhere to be seen, and there has been no food in the house. The kids all started complaining to their mother about this and apparently it all kicked off. All of the children were kicked out. They are now scattered around the city. Ash had no choice but the come to ours. She has nowhere other than care to go.
The thing is, we want her here. We want her safe. We want her away from the drugs, drug dealers, crime, thieving, partying, drunks, random men sleeping at the house, violence, neglect, abuse, etc. This all comes from her mother and Ash's two older sister's who are following their mom's lead. We want Ash out of that. She hasn't been going to school, bathing, eating properly, brushing her teeth. She has had her nose and eyebrow pierced and both are very infected. We want to get rid of that infection and her nits, get her some clothes that fit and that aren't ripped and stained, get her back into school, etc. We want to help her, We love her.
But how do we do that? We have no authority over her. This is another post and if I continue to write about this I will type for days. I will have to split all this over days.
This has been going on for years. Ash has had lice since she was less that 7. She is now 12. The only time she didn't have it is when she lived with us for a year. Even then she would visit her mother for a weekend and come home with them. This child has been neglected by her mother, completely. Left to take care of herself while her mother gets fucked up with whatever substance she can score that day.
I will write more tomorrow about why we cannot enforce rules, take control, and therefore help her. Why are we powerless? I know many reasons why and will write about it.
Other things to write about include:
Mine and Ashleigh's history
Ashleigh's mother's history
Mine and Ricky's attempts to help and problem solve
etc
All meld into one eventually and are all connected but I will try to separate them for my own benefit.
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