An Appeal: Help Us Get Our Family Back Together

This month has been one of the worst months of my life.

So as has been mentioned, Chris landed a new job in the Boston area, looking to be closer to his farher, who recently had a massive heart attack. We wanted the boy to know his family, and to have time with his grandfather.

He received his job offer in the first week of July, replied very quickly, finished the required paperwork, the whole deal. The contract was signed, July 11th, the paperwork finished by the 18th in theory. The contracting agency gave him a start date of August 3rd, so he turned down the other two job offers he had pending, and flew up to Boston on August 1st raring to start his new job.

... Except the end client wasn't ready for him. In fact, they hadn't even started the paperwork to get him a start date, and THEIR contract and purchase order had only been signed on the third. The subcontracting company had lied about the start date in order to keep Chris from taking another job. Then the start date was August 10th, then August 17th, then last week it came down that MAYBE in 6 weeks he could start...

The contracting agency was supposed to make partial payment to him for the delay, but that's still "in process" more than a week after saying they would do it, and at best wouldn't be "through the process" until the next pay period on the 15th... frankly, we don't believe it's going to happen, they just keep trying to delay so Chris won't take another job. 

Meanwhile, we have burned through everything we've got, he's not getting paid, and we have to move out of our house in a few weeks.

At this point we're completely separated as a family, because it took all we had to get him to Boston in the first place... So our son and I were left behind in Florida, helpless and 1400 miles apart.

After the contract startup delay extended more than a week, Chris started actively pursuing other opportunities. In addition to waiting out the contract delay, he's currently actively working 7 different job opportunities that might actually end in an offer. He has had several interviews already, withe more this week.  Two of the recruiters are confident he will have an offer, possibly next week.

In the meantime, I've been in Florida, with a toddler, having continuous and severe panic attacks and recurrent PTSD episodes, from past abandonment and emotional abuse. Not a good thing, and something I'm now somewhat heavily medicated for, just to function. So in other words having the family split apart by circumstances and lying contracting agencies, is literally making me insane.

It's the 31st and he still hasn't started the new gig. The contracting company straight up lied to him and left him holding the bag. It's also the day we expected to receive his first paycheck. He did everything right, had the paperwork returned within 12 hours, managed to get to Boston for his start date and... got completely screwed over.

Early in the month I used donated airline miles to book tickets for the child and me to visit him in Boston, expecting that he'd be paid by now and... he's not. He also lost his place to stay in all of this. I've been dealing with constant panic attacks and PTSD episodes. We can't afford to keep the house in Florida, particularly with no housemate to split the rent with anymore. We're beyond broke.

Our original plan was for him to find us a rental as soon as he had income and move the family up then. I can't wait that long. This has become a crisis for me. Any of you who saw me disappear from Facebook for weeks... this is why. I have been in continuous panic freakouts all day long, almost every day, for weeks. I NEED to be with my husband NOW. As long as I'm with him, I can control the panic attacks... without him, I need to be medicated or they get out of control.

Fortunately Chris has found a friend who will let us live with them until we can get another place. Which is good because it will cost less to move than to pay full rent (we split it with the housemate until recently when the housemate moved out) and electricity and cable and everything else that goes with staying in the house. However I need to actually manage to fly up there to meet the possible housemate, make sure everyone gets along, etc etc. This is especially important because I'm literally going insane from the lack of my husband. Fortunately I already have plane tickets for Christopher and me.

Our current plan (if everything goes perfectly) is that I go through with the intended flights, make preparations on that end, then come back and load what we're keeping into the rental truck, get the car onto a trailer to be towed behind the rental truck, load up the dogs, and head north.

We already gave notice to vacate on the house (because we can't pay for the rent anyway, and we'd already paid last month's rent upon moving in) and they have nee tenants altrady lined up... and now we have to get out by the end of the month. I've been packing and cleaning like crazy while handling the toddler and dogs by myself, while having major anxiety over the whole thing.

So Chris is focusing on getting new work, and trying to find temporary employment. I am focusing on getting the house ready and moved, and getting it paid for while he does. The only problem? We literally don't have the cash to accomplish this. I don't have the cash for the bills, the necessary medications, the gas to get to the airport, the rental truck, the trailer, the cleaning supplies necessary or even that small thing called FOOD. This should have been fixed by now. And if Chris hadn't been completely screwed over it wouldn't be a problem at all.

We did the right thing... we did everything right, and we SHOULD have been paid by now... and be well sorted in a few weeks. Instead were being punished again, for I don't know what. We just can't seem to catch a single break.

So at this point, we need the $3,500 to fund the move, the final bills, pay for the medications that keep us alive, and food and other essentials; until the entire family is moved to Boston and back together and Chris begins work. So... as much as I never wanted to do anything like this again... I need to ask for help. Because we need the family back together, both to keep our costs down, and so Chris and I don't go insane over months of separation.

Honestly, I can't take any more time apart... this is absolutely killing me, and I can't take anymore. We NEED to be back with my husband right now... 

So please, please help us. I know some of you ask for a PayPal link whenever we do this, so here it is:

Otherwise please email me at melody DOT byrne AT gmail DOT com and we can arrange something. Thank you so much. I can't even tell you how much any help at all means.

Mel

A hard road out...

With two very notable exceptions, the 2010s have been a pretty horrible decade for us so far...

Those notable exceptions, would be me not dying in 2012, and the boy being born in 2013.

The rest though? It sounds melodramatic to say I know what hell is like... but there are days it feels like it.

September 2010 is when everything really started going completely to hell... the girls being taken, and my health getting so bad I was on sudden death watch for six weeks at the end of the year.

Then my brother dying and finding out it was cancer in early 2011. Leaving Wells Fargo late that year and starting contracting again as the cancer worsened. Commuting from Idaho to SFO every week while I got sicker and sicker.

Trying to go to GBR in Reno that year, and I managed two whole dinners, and a couple hours at the range one morning... and the rest of the time I was stuck in my hotel room, in pain.... not even able to sit up in a chair to be with some of my best friends...

Honestly, that was in September... and I don't even remember the rest of the year after that... My sleep apnea from the tumor was so bad that even with the cpap and the meds it was depriving my brain of oxygen. My thyroid and adrenals had pretty much stopped functioning by then, but we couldn't supplement because it might have made the cancer worse... and the tests said I wasnt actually critically hypothyroid but they were wrong, because of the weirdness of the cancer... and I was just getting sicker and sicker, and stupider and stupider.

Then early 2012 my mom dies, and the IRS decides to screw us over, and seizes our accounts while we're visiting Boston for her damn memorial... The memorial that never happened because... things were screwed up with that side of my family... Then I get a great new gig, that turns to hell, as my cancer decides to go stage 4 and almost kill me.

Then it's good news, as we find out Mel is pregnant with the boy... and bad news as we find out how bad the malignancy was, and the metastasis, and how much radiation I would need... and the radiation... I spent three months completely in bed... the cancer and the radiation were so bad I'm still not recovered fully from it.

And 2013 rolls around...

December 1995 to December 1996 used to be my worst year ever... It started with a motorcycle accident, losing my fiancee, losing my home, and losing my job, all on the same day, ended with the man I loved most in the world dying, and in between, my house burning down, and several friends dying ..

Now... my worst year is April 2013 to April 2014... not even a question.

In 2013, we finally run out of resources... and we lost the atv, and the boat, and the car, and most of the guns, and almost anything of value we had...

But we get a bright spot in March because the boy is born... and we live for him for the next few months, until we finally lost the house at the end of August...

Meanwhile, Mel has SEVERE pre and post partum issues, and our community of friends is torn apart by... nasty things from nasty people... and people we love are badly hurt, and friendships are lost and... things just go from bad to worse.

This is the point where stuff could have started turning around... but instead it turns out we made the wrong decision, and everything just kept getting worse... Because instead of going to my family in Boston, when they were asking us to, and could help us... We made the incredibly stupid decision to go back to Arizona.

... in the middle of nowhere, with limited phone and Internet, 80 miles from any employment or friends, and Mel's autistic hyperreligious father...

And we just got stuck in a hole for a few months...

But I was stupid enough to think I was recovered enough to work again... and so, with the help of vast quantities of pharmaceuticals, come November, I start a new job that requires rapid relocation entirely across the country to New Hampshire... while I'm trying to work 60 to 80 hours a week... and traveling back and forth from Arizona to Vegas, then to New Hampshire, then Chicago, Arizona, New Hampshire, Connecticut, back to New Hampshire, back to Arizona, to Seattle, and then what was supposed to be a final trip back from AZ to NH... all in a matter of a few weeks.

Only the company (who went half bust and were acquired soon after by the way) decided to screw me over relocation expenses, because the CFO and I didnt get along and never wanted to pay relo anyway... and they left us stranded in the middle of a transcontinental relocation... no home to go to, unpaid and unreimbursed, out of pocket to the tune of almost $20,000...

And my health, which had not been good to begin with... after months and months of travel and overwork, and stress... just collapsed. I got pneumonia in late January while I was still travelling, and I kept working through it because we needed to survive...  and it didn't clear up until early March... by which time we ended up stuck back in one little room in Arizona.

... and for its second.. or third maybe... encore, my destroyed endocrine system and the abuse I'd been heaping on my body for so long, finally caught up... and I spent 10 or so days going into and out of a myxedemic coma.

.... at the same time, Mels relationship with her father rapidly deteriorates, to the point where they are never going to speak again... and there I am... can't work, can't take care of my family... helpless, and homeless.

Thank God friends were able to help us out... and after a few days with good friends in phoenix.., Once again, rather than go to my family in Boston, we make the wrong decision... and go to Florida. No offense to the great friends who helped save our lives... we are grateful in ways we can't even express... but it was the wrong decision.

The last 15 months... they were better than the previous three and a half years absolutely, but they were the wrong move. After the first few months, things stopped getting better and just sort of oscillated around a low baseline.

Getting off the medication that was killing me, and onto the right one helped, but not enough... and Mels mindset and health deteroriated, and after some improvement mine plateaued way below where it needed to be... My inflammation was out of control, and the pain was... I just kept getting sick over and over... and in between I worked until I dropped... and I dropped and stayed down for weeks, then I'd work for a bit again, and then I'd drop again...

Then finally I made enough of a recovery, that I could commit to a full time job... and I did... in fact I overcommitted. 80 plus hours weeks for months, for low pay... because I believed in what we were doing, where we were going... and I get bronchitis, and work through it for three weeks, and kill myself crawling around a warehouse in 105 degree heat and humidity with it... I work for 70 hours straight through one time... but the CEO decides he wants to go in a different direction, and he can't afford me...

...and my dad has a heart attack... the day before my birthday no less... and I don't find out until the day of... from facebook no less, because apparently, everyone in my family had my old phone number from two years before... and it's a 98% blockage, and he actually died on the way to the ER and... it was really bad.

..And that has to be one of those not so gentle hints you get every once in a while that you're doing the wrong thing.

We lost the Idaho house the end of August 2013... and have gone through hell since...  We should have come back to Boston two years ago.

If we had gone back to Boston after the boy was born, as we should have... April 2013 to 2014 never would have happened. I wouldn't have ended up in a coma... Instead of struggling with intermittent contracts and friends and family helping and generally being a damn burden on everyone... I'd have been working in a good high paying job, that didn't require 4 hour round trip commutes, or airline commutes, or 80% travel... and we would have had my family around to help and support us.

Instead we spent a year in a holding pattern, while Mels own issues get worse and worse, and we get more and more isolated, and...

And then my dad has a heart attack... and it's pretty damn clear we have to go to Boston, to be around him, and my family, and to make sure my son knows his grandfather and...

So I look for jobs up here, I go through interviews, I get some great opportunities, I spend most of June and early July hustling a new gig... I even get a choice of potential offers... And one of them looks like a really great gig, and it's only a few minutes from my dad, and they want me to start right away, and GREAT... I take the offer, I sign the contract, I let the other employers know I'm unavailable, and I start getting ready to come up here.

That was July 11th...  I was supposed to start on the 3rd, and I've now been up here 19 days and I'm still waiting to start, and even then after that I won't be paid for four weeks...

...meanwhile I haven't been paid since May...

...and I'm getting jerked around because "the process" is so badly broken, that I may not start until some time next month, and then not be paid until a month after that...

So, as soon as I found out that I was misled about the start date, I started looking for other  jobs, and in fact I've had several phone interviews already. Im on second interview phase on four different... really good... jobs in the next few days.

... but even if I get a new job next week (unlikely), or the week after (possibly); the start date won't be until mid September, or even first of October... and then I won't be paid for 15 to 30 days after that.

And my wife is stuck back in Florida with the toddler, and it's coming up on the end of the month, and her state of mind is NOT good, and getting worse every day I'm not home...

... and when I get here, I find out my dad is FAR worse than I knew about... my grandmother dying last year after three years of taking care of her through the decline, and then the heart attack... his PTSD has got so bad...

And now... this delay, and my money situation, and Mel's stress and bad reaction, and my dad's issues, and... and as pathetic a tale of woe as this is, I've left out most of it... and just every damn thing.

Apparently my family have had enough... because... well there's no more help there... that was made clear to me today... yesterday.. whatever... and things are starting to get nasty, and I have no right to ask anything of them anyways... and apparently, none of any of this has actually happened, and I'm just... yeah... it got nasty.

...and we've already lost almost everything, several times over...

... And I keep trying to do the right thing, or anything I can... and I keep getting hit in the damn face... Sometimes it's my health, sometimes it's my own fault from my own bad decisions,  sometimes it somebody else, sometimes it's just the way things go...

And I'm writing this... half of me doesn't want to post it, because it's too damn much of a tale of woe... and the other half has to write this down, because it's just too damn much and I've got to get it out,

We have got great friends who are doing what they can to help us, and people who love us... and God knows I appreciate that... and they've been with us through this whole process, even back to the custody battle for the girls...

...But I haven't breathed a single breath that wasn't under imminent threat of our life being ruined, or even dying, since... I don't even know... what year did the custody case go federal? 2007? 2008? I haven't been healthy since even before that, and I have only been healthy enough to actually work for... less than a year now really... I have been in a non stop life and death struggle since September 2010, and every time it gets any better, I keep getting knocked back down.

My personal favors, my relationships, my resources, my reputation, my honor, my pride, and now both Mels family and mine... they're... just gone...

I keep seeing the light at the end of the tunnel... and I keep getting hit by the train that's behind it...

... and I am badly, badly burned out, and exhausted, and I just need to rest, and I can't... I haven't been able to rest since 2010... or before...

Now, it's mid... I guess late now... 2015... August 20th 2015... in two weeks it'll be five years since the girls were taken...

I no longer have a "worst year"...

I now have a "worst five years"... September 2010 through August 2015...

Maybe September 2015 will be better... I really hope so...

Critical Process Capture

I'm going to illustrate for you how process capture, and broken processes, have real world consequences, for the success of your organization, as well as for the people in it.

At the very end of April, my father had a serious heart attack. In the wake of that, my wife and I decided to move back to the Boston area, to be closer to him.

I start looking for jobs up here, I go through interviews, I get some great opportunities, I spend most of June and early July hustling a new gig... I even get a choice of potential offers...

One of them looks like a really great gig, and it's only a few minutes from my dad, and they want me to start right away, and GREAT... I take the offer, I sign the contract, I let the other employers know I'm unavailable, and I start getting ready to come up here.

That was July 11th... 

Now, it's mid... I guess late... August... August 20th to be exact. Six weeks after I signed the contract... and now tied for the longest time I've gone between signed contract, and start date.

When I was recruited, this was a critically urgent... in fact months overdue... requirement. And they had a very quick process for interviewing and hiring me... It was two weeks from first phone call, to signed contract, with a projected start date another two weeks out... "Maybe three at the most".

At this point, "the process" got started... and the failure started along with it.

A two week out start date, became the first week of August... Then, after my tickets have been booked for two weeks, and I'm a day from travelling, I get a phone call... It's not gonna be the 3rd, it'll be a meeting on the 5th to get my badges and paperwork done, and then I'll start either the 6th or the 10th.

Ok, that's annoying, but I can deal with it... a few days of hanging out with my family, seeing my friends... It's a big pain losing a week of billing, but we'll live.

Then I go to the meeting on the 5th expecting to be ready to go... get my badge, fill in my final paperwork... This is what my recruiter and contract manager said the meeting was supposed to be about...

Except "the process" had other plans.

I talk to the hiring manager in the meeting that Wednesday,  and I find out that due to "delays in the approvals process", even though I had signed the contract on July 11th, the actual PO for the first phase of the engagement, had only been signed that Monday... and, because it is a completely serialized process, with no parallel work streams allowed, the SOW hadn't even been signed or approved yet.

At that point, they hadn't even started the paperwork to get me cleared to start, never mind a start date, a workspace, a PC, ID'S etc... and in fact, because of "the process", they weren't even allowed to START the sub process for doing do.

But "they're working on it"... "it should be the next week, assuming all goes well, or at worst, the 17th", because "someone will be working "the process" the whole time".

Only the week of the 10th the hiring manager goes on vacation... and I find out that nothing even got started the week before, except my background check...

... Which I told them at the first meeting would pop an issue if they did a credit check, because of the medical issues and losing the house etc... and which they said wouldn't be a problem, there was an exception process and they'd get started right away...

Remember, I signed the contract July 11th, and was told by the contracting agency, that the background check had cleared, THREE WEEKS BEFORE, or I never would have got on a plane in the first place...

And, of course, there's an issue with my background check, because they are one of the few companies that still does a credit check for pre-employment screening ...even though I'm just a subcontractor... and they have arbitrary rules about what's "clearable",  so there's a problem...

...but there's an "exception process", and I need to wait for the paperwork from the background check company in order to do my part of the process... Which by the way they send to Florida instead of here, and which doesn't get to Florida, until this past SATURDAY, more than a week after the background check was initiated.

...Meanwhile my hiring manager needs to start the exception process... which can take 10 to 15 business days... which he was supposed to do after the meeting on THE FIFTH...

... Only he's on vacation, and he didnt start the "exception process" because they can't start the exception until the background check starts being processed and comes up with a problem... and that didnt actually happen until he was already on vacation... and the person who is supposed to be "working the process" isn't "working the process", because only the hiring manager is allowed to start the "except process"...

...but the manager "knows about it, and will start on it as soon as he gets back".

... yeah...

The hiring manager finally got back from vacation on Tuesday, and apparently NOBODY understands the damn process, because four different people in four different groups have a different idea of what needs to be done by who...

...and there can't be any separate work streams, it's all serial...

...and unless they can "expedite the exception process", it may be ANOTHER 10 TO 15 BUSINESS DAYS before the EXCEPTION can be processed... and that has to be completed before the REST of the on boarding process can even START...

... which may take 10 to 15 days beyond that...

... Unless they can "expedite the on boarding process"...

That's been my last few days... and in fact, my last few weeks.

Yesterday, I got a call from the contact administrator, the hiring manager says it's absolutely critical to get me on boarded as soon as possible, and he's working the exception process but needs me to go back to the group that told me that I need to have the hiring manager work the "exception process".

They're now six months overdue on the requirements I'm supposed to be filling, and every day I'm not working they fall further and further behind...

... but "the process" must be obeyed, and there is no way around it except "the exception process", which is really just another part of "the process".

Later today, I talk to that group again... I tried working with them again yesterday, but the guy who was supposed to be working with me, was out the last few days, and their backfill person had no clue what to do... except to "start the process over again" from scratch, which would take... you guessed it... another 10 to 15 business days.

This friends, is process capture... I'm almost tempted to say at its worst... but unfortunately, I've seen worse...

Proof and Motivation

Almost everyone I love or care about, suffers from depression, anxiety, addiction or substance abuse, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, or some combination thereof.

So, whether I would otherwise or not... I do too... It's different for me of course, but I do too.

And if you are in the same boat, so do you.

And if you are a primary sufferer, remember... those who love you are suffering through it too.

You may not see it, they may be hiding it from you, they may show it in different ways... and they most likely will not tell you, because they know you will just use it as ammunition against yourself.

And when you feel like you're alone, and nobody loves you... the fact that they are their suffering with you, is the most tangible proof you will ever have that you are loved and you aren't alone.

Tattoo it on your forehead if you have to, so every time you look in the mirror you'll be reminded.

Don't use it as an excuse to feed your depression and anxiety and pain even more... Don't use it as an excuse to justify the evil thought "they would be better off without me". Use it as proof that you're loved, and not alone, and motivation to drive on and live your life as best you can.

When you love someone... their pain, is your pain... And their "not wanting to hurt you" or minimizing or "leaving for your benefit" or anything else... I doesn't stop the pain, it makes it worse.

Use it as proof, and motivation.... it's the best that you can do.