In process of writing a book for income

[Dowd Sally]

I don't know where to turn anymore. I hope someone can take the time to read this and offer help and/or point me in the right direction. Please, someone, take the time to read my story. I have knocked on every door, interviewed, applied to temp agencies. I have no family and no support system.
I am homeless and in debt and have a ton of expenses and nobody will hire me.
Many people tell me I am incredibly gifted with artistic and creative capabilities I have had my entire life and that I am a great writer so I am writing a book. I excel in all genres, though I haven't had the time or space to put them to use. I have had countless people tell me I am the kindest person they have ever met. So on and so forth...but here I am. In absolute need of a miracle.
It seems as if trying to overcome and step out of the awful environment I grew up in and break that cycle, I have only buried myself. I graduated with highest honors and, at 41, I am unable to find employment and am homeless and drowning in debt. I am ashamed of my life as I always wanted so much better and truly believed it would be. Nobody should have a mortgage put on their life just because they attempted to make it better.
It feels as though I am guessing my way through this life, missing so much time as a result. By now, I would love to have a family and a career and a home without worry. I grew up with an alcoholic mother who was often abusive and very destructive and my biological father was in prison my whole life. I knew from a young age that their lives were not the kind of life I wanted for myself. But what I wanted was never modeled to me.
Many people say it seems like a miracle that I even graduated high school. I didn't experience the ceremony or any typical milestones, but I graduated. However, days before the ceremony I was unable to attend, I left to be with a man I had fallen for. He was a kind man and the closest thing to normality and something familial I had ever known at that time. We were married by the time I was twenty. Because I had gotten married, I was rejected for financial aid. I will honestly never forget how hard and long I cried that day.
More and more, over time, I was feeling like something was missing. It was a struggle as my identity became clearer. At 36, I came out as gay. Letting the man I was with go was the absolute hardest thing I ever had to do. He was understanding, asked me if I felt better after having told him, spent an amazing last few weeks with me and ended up disappearing, leaving I married for a year without knowing where he was. His disappearance would turn into three years before he eventually became my friend.
I will not go into how my estranged "family" reacted, the events that ensued around that time, or the three year incredibly emotionally abusive relationship that I endured with a professor at a college in my community. What I will say is that, as a result of that time, nobody would hire me. The first thing I did when I found out I was divorced a year after his disappearance, though, was go back to school. And, although I have been homeless on and off for the past six years, I graduated this past December summa cum laude (highest honors) with a Bachelor's of Arts in Science.
I am the first in my family. I am writing my very first book, although I fear the inability to afford an editor as I wanted to get it out this summer to increase my chanced into getting into a fully funded Master's program. I hope to eventually become a creative writing professor, though I unfortunately missed the deadline for the next Master's programs, which, along with the debt that will be growing fast soon, has put a huge halt in my life. I am alone and unable to thrive. Furthermore, due to my upbringing, what I didn't know until last year is that your bachelor's degree can be different from your master's. Had I known that, I would have gotten my bachelor's in business and my master's and Ph.D. in creative writing. I now owe about $10,000 in student loans and that will start growing by at least $2 a day and I still cannot find a job that will afford my expenses. I recently found out that these loans are not even eligible for deference. Somehow, Navient also sent me a letter congratulating me and claiming some or all of my student debt was paid off. I got my hopes up high hoping that perhaps some miracle happened, only to open my account and find that was not true. It had not gone down a penny.
Also, and this is a digression - desperate for both an income as I work on my book and transportation, I fell for Uber and Lyft ads claiming their drivers make over $1,500 a week. I ended up financing a car and found that the ads are nowhere near true. Unable to pay for rent here along with all my other expenses, I ended up going to Detroit where it's less expensive, but still homeless and struggling. However, this time I have a car payment, phone payment, and growing student loan debt along with all kinds of other various expenses. I had to leave the person I love incredibly, which was a huge slap to my pride because I always wanted to take care of her, since I didn't want the weight of my life to drag her down. Life wasn't looking promising in Detroit and I ended up getting a call to do extra work for a few days on a show. Jumping at any glimmer of hope, I hightailed it back across the country with nowhere to go, but figuring since I can't afford the debt, I may have to find something and live in my car just to keep up with the payments of having a car. I need a break. I am ashamed of my life. I am usually a very happy person with as little as I have...it is not good for my spirit to be encumbered...if any friend were to write a letter of recommendation to you, what I do know is they would tell you that I have a bright spirit and a positive energy, even in my darkest days. In fact, two people have written letters in fruitless attempts to help me out of this situation because they see the promise in me if only I could.
Being alone, my whole life has been about surviving first. I never had the comfort to hone skills or was given the knowledge that it even mattered. My mother was an absent mess, slurring and falling through tables or stumbling to the floor drunk in front of my friends, unable to get up. Sometimes she got violent with them, scaring them away. She was too consumed in her own world of pain and didn't have the tools within her to deal with them constructively. I saw some awful things. When I would come home from school, she would drunkenly give me guilt trips when I tried to do my homework. Although my grades were struggling due to the nightmarish situation at home, I won awards for my art and writing and was invited into the Literary Guild, though I couldn't afford it. My mother wished that I would end up being a heavy party girl. Instead, I was soft and too sensitive to the world around me. To this day, I remember crying at four to the mere passing site of an old woman sitting alone in a window. Or a woman taunting a homeless man. I was prudish, too, despite my fun, adventurous, free-spirited rebellious streak. In high school, I'd listen to the girls talk about partying and wondered to myself how they were doing such an adult thing under their parents' roofs, feeling it to be disrespectful. I was a good kid. My younger days were spent playing with my little brother or trying to occupy myself outside because she was so lost in her own pain to really spend any quality time with me. Some days, I would imagine Samantha from Bewitched was my mother and feel incredibly guilty that it even entered my mind. I saw the man who is essentially my biological father likely less than what I can count on my hands. He found me sleeping outside in the sandbox one day. I was terrified and ashamed that was what I came from even at that age that I ran upstairs to my room and buried myself under all the toys and clothing that was piled in my closet. I knew I wanted something far different than what they were settling for. City lights were always in my head and everyone who came around would say huge things about me, building my hopes that my life would, indeed, amount to something more than what I was seeing.
My little sister ended up with his father, who promised to adopt me all of my life and left me. My older brother, by default and dependence, ended up with my mother. I ended up with nobody. It is unsettling. It leaves one feeling ungrounded.
Despite my degree, I still never honed the skills that people are looking for in order to make any decent living. I never knew many things to prepare me because all I saw was TV-watching, intoxicated days, *, partying, etc. As a result, I feel like I'm being punished in some strange way for trying so hard to make my life better. Nobody should have a mortgage on their lives for attempting to make it better. And, furthermore, everything requires experience and, because of that, nobody allows your foot in the door to get experience.
And my friend is right - I put my all into people I was in relationships with, sacrificing an incredible amount, who would've never done any such thing for me.
Being here probably isn't necessarily good for me. But going back to where I am from was a nightmarish mistake. When my mother would call me when I was here before, she sounded happier and healthier than I had known her to be. She said it would be a good idea to go back and I thought so, too, at least for that time being. I thought that I could have the space and time to finish my book, which gets rave reviews from those who have read bits of it. I also thought I'd have a stronger support system and I imagined somehow having a chance at a different kind of relationship with her...better? Than I ever had. I craved it, having had nobody. Then what I saw was so sad. They live in dark...no lights...in a bland apartment. They, who I know in their insides want something else, never bathe. She is always in the same pajamas in front of the TV. They gave up. She would have my brother go outside looking for cigarette butts for her and he would scream at her for it. She would take her pills and not wake up at times and slur for days. They were becoming dependent on me...I was becoming an unpaid caretaker in my extremely silent days...running their errands, taking them places, one place being a food line. It made me wonder if I was just doomed from the beginning.
So I miss the Master's program and, in a panic, contact beauty schools to learn how to cut hair so I can at least do something lucrative and fun in the interim and find out I can't get financial aid for it any longer because I already graduated with a bachelor's. And licensing for anything else...same thing...and I have no resources. No backing. Nothing. Even to pay for a realtor's license or a personal trainer license. The expenses right now are too much.
Now it's a crazy place to find myself where it seems like everyone in my life has fallen away through my awful relationship with the professor or just a gradual change in directions. And the person I love is the only person here in Seattle I know and who cares but we're in an incredibly weird place, and often times a bad place due to the emotions and her not wanting me at her place. My side of it being incredibly humiliating and belittling and making me feel small. When I met her, I was on top of the world. I was sure I was going to make it with this book quickly and that I could be big in her world. I was amazed that I found someone who loves me as much as she with as little as I had. Reading through profiles and hearing people talk, I didn't believe that would ever happen. I also didn't believe I would have so little for long and didn't know getting a car would truly mess my life up past any form of expression. Beyond the fact that my body had a full on reaction like I've never had upon seeing her face, I knew I loved her with everything I had in me a night in the pool when she ended up too tired and her head fell on my shoulder and I held her there for a bit and got her tucked in and I wanted to be her rock and take care of her and always be whatever she needed. I always wanted to uplift her and elevate her and care for her and do anything for her. She has actually loved me better than any of the people I've been with have and it has always been my deepest wish to be the caretaker and the breadwinner. I have never experienced so many incredible and beautiful synchronicities than with her and it has been so hard to have to let her go because my life is so heavy. I'm at my wits end. I can't see how I am going to overcome these obstacles, spending my days in silence...no calls for interviews and the jobs I am qualified for wouldn't afford all these expenses...it is battering to my spirit and who I am. I feel absolutely defeated. My days are silent and I wake up alone in my car or in the place of someone who is pressuring me to get out, every day dizzy with pain in my chest and unable to breathe. We live in a culture where we are taught to hide our difficulties and we have to defend our right to be sad or say we are having a difficult time. In indigenous cultures, when a woman cried or struggled, the whole tribe would join her. We live in a society that tells us to suck it up and makes us feel worse for feeling bad.
I want out of this debt without my life getting worse. Without bad credit. Beyond that, I'm so busy struggling that now I see my biggest dream slipping through my fingers - I wanted to have my book done before masters programs deadlines. Masters programs deadlines are coming up and I can't make it happen. I don't even have letters of recommendation, let alone the ability to finish the last bit of my book so I can impress them. I owe 640 every month already. I don't have a home. I wish someone would hire me for more than minimum wage because I clearly am going to need that to survive. Please help. Somebody. I am desperate. I am alone. I am sinking into a really dark place because the obstacles are just too much.

[March]

Hey all! I am interested in writing articles / working from home as I write my book. My current job with the U.S. postal service has drastically reduced my hours due to a lifting disability that occurred at work. I have not been able to acquire work because of it even though it is only a 3 percent disability. I need work and I need to be able to work around my 12 year old Son (born with Down syndrome) and school schedule. I write my book in the evening only. My husband walked out on is and left me holding the bag. A straight forward, without a catch work from home job that pays adequate wages is what I need. If you have what I'm looking for, I'd be interested in hearing from you. Sincerely,