I went over to the overpriced apartment complex this morning and gave them a deposit to hold the apartment while they check my credit to see how much of a security deposit I will have to give them. The amount could be as much as three times the rent.

I have the pro-rated rent till the first. That will leave me just enough to buy some more peanut butter until the next paycheck, at which time rent will be due.

That doesn't cover the security deposit, the electric deposit, the dog deposit.

I am quite serious, if I ever manage to pull myself out of this increasingly deep hole, I WILL HELP OTHERS in getting the money together for the deposits to get their own place. I did nothing to deserve this, I have no one to turn to for help-I make too much money for assistance.

I guess 'they' think I should blow off the past due bills for food and to save money for a slew of deposits; I guess they think if this happened to me, I must either be guilty of something, or too stupid to be permitted to live.

Well, I'm neither stupid, or guilty of anything wrong. And I know there are an unfortunate lot of women out there just like me, whose husbands/friends/family/ community turned on them like hyenas when it all came down. And I don't want anyone to go through this, what I'm going through. It's awful-and I didn't do anything wrong!

Once upon a time I lived in my own home-nothing fancy, but we owned it, and it was the beginning of the nightmare when Crusty started saying he hated our house and he wanted me to find something down in Dothan.

Permit me to back up. When my dad died in 1985 and Crusty took the job at Ft. Rucker, Alabama, the money was pretty good and we were renting a house in Ozark while we looked for a piece of land to build a house on.

But I'd inherited a little bit from my dad, and since my brother and sister-in-law managed to get Crusty to sign a document stating he wouldn't try to touch my money, I felt a little hope, and I used a visit to my brother and his wife to hide that I was buying a place in Virginia where I could escape.

Then my brother and his wife went to jail for importing marijuana. The police let her go, they extradited my brother back to Florida.

I sold everything I owned to help my brother pay for lawyers because he swore to me he was innocent-which I, not being stupid, knew was not the truth, but hey, the guy was my brother-and gave my sister-in-law the money to pay the lawyer she'd hired.

Which they (sister-in-law and lawyer) promptly converted to small unmarked bills and hopped a plane to the Caymens.

Honest.

I'd visit Harry in the prison work camp while he was incarcerated (sometimes bringing little Fox as I thought he might learn crime doesn't pay from an up close view) and he ask me if I'd heard from the sister-in-law. Then he heard from her-she divorced him.

After he got out of prison she called him and told him I'd not given her the money.

My brother doesn't speak to me anymore.

Of course, there is a little more to the story, but this is it in a nut-shell.

Ain't life swell?

Anyway, Crusty found out about the farm I'd bought in Virginia, and blew a fuse. This happened just before Harry was arrested. Crusty tried to get me to sell the place before Harry got into trouble, but I was determined to hang on to it...

Then, just after Harry went to jail to await trial, Crusty heard lay-off rumours. We got out of the lease on the three bedroom/2 bath home with a family room and huge fenced yard, and bought a 1962 Douglass of Georgia 10'x48' (including the trailer tongue) mobile home. We gutted it and rebuilt it from the studs up.

Because it was so small, we were, after Crusty wasn't laid off after all, to put some pretty nice material into it.

It survived Hurricane Opal nicely.

But in March of 1998 Crusty became even more frightening than he'd been in all of the previous years. (Which were pretty scary, really, and had just included a stint in Central America ('94-'96), where I began to understand just how crazy things were getting...)

And then we moved down to Dothan. We sold the little trailer.

I didn't know it, but I'd just become essentially homeless.

And so alone.

I filled out the application, and couldn't tell the woman in the office why I didn't know my son's telephone number when she insisted she needed a number of someone to call in case of emergency or she couldn't run the application. So I gave her Roomie's number.

Driving back to where I have been eking out an existence at Roomie's, I almost fell apart.

I have NEVER EVER been so close to giving up in my life.

If I go to a homeless shelter, they will kill my dog.

I HAVE TRIED TO FIND HIM A NEW HOME!!! I've also gone without food since October on a regular basis so that I could catch up the bills (see previous blogs wherein I go on about Roomie holding back my mail, and deleting phone messages) and still pay Roomie what ever the rent was that day (it flucuated, sometimes he would scare nearly a thousand dollars a month out of me) AND still buy dog kibble.

Monday, at work, where I have no friends (no friends at home, no family, life alone, not fun), and lots of co-workers who either don't know I'm alive, or hate me because I do my job and they don't, the manager will call to let me know how much I have to pay to get into that apartment.

If it is more than $350, I'll be homeless.

Roomie has made it very clear. If I am not out by the 28th, he will put me in a homeless shelter.

And Crusty will get his wish-to see me homeless, a bag lady, and begging.