I really don’t get it when people here say that I’m trolling or otherwise being disingenuous, unless they are just trolling themselves. When the situation arose at work I did a bit of Googling and this site was the one that appeared at the top of the search for the query I had. I wasn’t really sure it was a hardware-based space – the name of the forum perhaps gives it away but people started to respond and so I kept posting updates.
Life story warning: my wife of seven years and I found out that she was pregnant in 2021. She was nursing at the time (still is) while I was finishing my master’s degree in audio engineering. It turned out to be quite a difficult pregnancy for her and I ended up taking a bit of time off my job in a factory as she needed me at home. When our daughter was born in early 2022 things remained difficult and we figured that I should quit as I had been off for some months and I could always get another job once everything was sorted at home, one perhaps more in line with my degree. A fresh start.
I didn’t know just how extreme of a fresh start I would be having for midway through last year my wife and I decided to separate. This isn’t something we are proud of – creating a broken home for our daughter when she’s just one year old. I give myself a hard time over it literally every day so please reserve judgement.
I had to move out and found myself in temporary accommodation, moving around a couple of times until I was offered accommodation through the local council (not my dream home by any stretch but grateful to have it), and I was now unemployed to boot. We had some savings, not much, but we split what was there, taking into account the value of the car (she doesn’t drive and I needed it for visitation). We separated just as we were approaching the MOT / car tax / insurance renewal period and so by the time all of that was paid (I paid everything up for the year as I didn’t want to get stung with monthly car payments when I wasn’t secure with earnings) I was left with not too much left (we’re talking a few hundred), but at least I had the car. I took a trip to the job centre and went on social security. We call it Universal Credit in the UK.
Finding work was tough. My ex-wife and I agreed that I should be in our daughter’s life as much as possible (I had been her primary carer through much of her first year while my wife worked on getting herself better so there was a bond there) and so for much of last summer and into the autumn we had a schedule where I would have our daughter every Tuesday, Thursday and over the weekend from Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening. It was tough as money started to get tight, but it has been arranged through the courts that these are the days. This fits around my ex-wife’s own shift patterns (not that she has gone back to work yet but she will be soon – it’s amazing the amount of time the NHS has allowed her to be off: she’s worked something like two months in the last two and a half years). She'll be working the days I have our daughter. The idea is to minimise shuttling her around different places all the time – she'll either be with mum or she'll be with dad.
What was tougher was finding work to fit around this schedule. My old job was out; all factory work was out; most jobs were out; pals would say to apply for remote work so that I could work from home while my daughter was there; but then I found that care jobs were advertising themselves as being flexible around shift patterns – you tell us what you can do and we’ll work around that. So I applied for every single care job within a 25 mile radius of my new address that I could find on the main website I was using and started booking interviews.
I ended up with several options and went with what felt like the best of them. Then I stupidly got involved in a couple of conversations surrounding abortion as I mentioned in my first post and now I am struggling to figure out what’s best. The job I still technically have but am losing my grasp on more with each passing day fits around this schedule quite nicely. 14 hours on a Monday and Wednesday and 7 hours on a Saturday. This actually leaves me with the Friday each week where I don’t have work or my daughter all day and so can do things like go for haircuts and dentist appointments or chill or work out maybe how to start a business based around my degree.
The other jobs I’ve been trying to quickly add to my potential options pool don’t seem to be quite as good in terms of shift patterns to the point where I would be able to get the hours in but would lose my Friday as I’d be doing split shifts – no one needs home carers from lunchtime until dinner time it would seem.
They do have a zero tolerance policy on abuse though. My current job doesn’t and so it can be difficult dealing with service-users who are constantly aggressive and abusive. Staff say to bear with it – they get better the more they know you and if you wait until a new start arrives then it will be them who get the brunt of the abuse putting you in the clear. I am on the core team of the most abusive of these guys (there are only so many people that are willing to work with him so I get him every morning).
To be honest it’s this element of the job that’s putting me off going back the most. Maybe this means I’m not built for the sector, I don’t know, but hearing about a zero tolerance on this type of behaviour makes these new positions sound like better options.
I was away for a few days last week to attend a funeral of a friend. He was only 46. Nightmare. They thought it was a heart-attack during the night but family reckon he had been stockpiling medication and had settled some personal affairs recently that had been lingering over him for a while. Friends at the funeral spoke of how there seemed to be changes in him in recent months. I do remember him saying to me several months ago that he wouldn’t care if he died right now – the best days of his life were behind him. I was too preoccupied with my personal situation of divorce and so on to pay it much mind although we did chat about it for a while at the time.
It’s put things into perspective. I’ve been through some **** in the last year but my mental health seems fine. I’ve maybe gained a few pounds but otherwise I am managing. I contacted the Samaritans helpline the other day and chatted with them for about an hour. We spoke about my friend and his death potentially being by his own hand; the situation with my ex-wife and daughter; and my problems at work. For some reason we got to speaking about Bronson Battersby, a two year old boy who died of starvation alone in his basement flat in January in England after his father died of a heart attack through the night. We put my mentioning of this down to perhaps my own guilt over what my wife and I have done to our daughter who is the same age as little Bronson. It has haunted me a lot over the last couple of months, that story. Overall I feel okay though, optimistic even.
My daughter won't be two forever and after the summer she'll make the big move to nursery and then she'll be at school and so on. My shift availability will change around this and the visitation schedule will evolve to accommodate these changes as time goes by. I'll have more working options. At the moment though I have a schedule to stick with. Childcare is super expensive but maybe I could start looking at it as a way to increase my earning potential and the hours I can work. I have a friend who is a single dad working 9-5, Monday to Friday and he spends more than a quarter of his income on childcare – and both of his kids are at school! Welcome to the real world, I guess.
So I’m fine with people telling me that I need to grow up and make a decision about what I’m doing and let my current job know where they stand; or that I am ******* this up 1000000000%. Totally cool with all of that. Keep it coming. It’s good to know how others view my (mostly poor) decisions and helps me realise the urgency I have to work with at the moment and how it’s not just myself I’m letting down.
But please don’t accuse me of trolling. This is my life, not some story I’ve made up. Just someone stuck in a bit of a ****** situation trying to get out of it all the while causing the least harm possible.
Thanks for giving this your time.