Story

Hello friends,

My name is Corey. A little about myself – I’m 34 years old and I’ve lived in Rochester Minnesota most of my life. I have an older brother and a younger sister who both mean the world to me. I enjoy being outdoors, reading, and the simple things in life.

My family moved to Minnesota from Illinois when I was a kid for my dad’s job. Soon after, my parents got divorced. My siblings and I lived with mom who was a waitress and things were very tight especially with dad leaving her with the mortgage so soon after the purchase. But we managed.

A year goes by and my mom meets a guy at work. We’ll call him Joe. Joe who moved in immediately and became her long-term boyfriend. Joe was not a good guy. As if things were not tight enough before, Joe lost his job right away and his beer and drug habits started shamelessly fracturing my dad’s child support he was sending. This left us with nearly empty food shelves and whole years at a time without internet or even electricity. We had to start using our neighbors garage refrigerator to keep our food cold, and installed a wood burning stove in the kitchen that we would split wood for. It was not a home, but more of a shell. Joe on the other hand was just fine with all of this drinking his beer and smoking his meth.

Yes, Joe smoked meth. A lot of it. And drank beer. A lot of it. He would bring friends over almost every night to smoke in our basement. He even hooked up an alarm to our basement door to alert him when it opened so him and his friends could try to hide their stuff before one of us kids got down there to do the laundry. Meth made him scary, but he was even scarier when he didn’t have any. Screaming, throwing things, breaking things, pushing, shoving almost every night… us kids would hide. Hide and be quiet and hope he doesn’t try to direct his rage on you somehow. It was awful. 12 years I dealt with that. It was hard to keep friends because I never wanted them to come to my house. I’d go to their houses and be blown away by the the family structure and how normal they were. They would actually sit down and watch a movie together, and eat dinner together. Parents would help with homework, and say goodnight before going to bed. A warm and loving environment.  A real home. I dreaded going back to mine…

I tried many times to try to get my sister and myself out of that situation. I begged my dad for years, and he only said the court made their decision and it was out of his hands.

One day, Joe started going off on my little sister who was maybe 4 years old at the time. He was raging about her messy room. He put 5 minutes on a timer, and told her if it’s not clean by then he would do it himself. Of course, the timer goes off and her room is not to his liking. He rolls our outside dumpster into her room along with a snow shovel and throws all of her stuff on the floor and starts shoveling it into the dumpster. My sister was horrified and cowering in our hallway. Joe picked up a little Barbie radio and threw it at her. It hit her square in the eye. My baby sister is bawling on the floor with a black and bloody eye, but Joe just keeps shoveling away and not once asks if she’s okay. It had to take until the following weekend when we visited my dad for an adult to take action. He took her to the hospital, and thankfully she was fine. This is when my dad went to the county and demanded action and change of custody. The county never did anything. My dad didn’t get any advantage of taking custody, my sister was assaulted, and Joe doesn’t even get a slap on the wrist.

A few years later, my brother is out living on his own and sobering up. You see, Joe pulled my brother who was 15 at the time into smoking meth with him. Now sober, my brother starts seeing how incredibly messed up the situation is. He put his foot down and went to the county and told them about all of the drug abuse in the house. This was supposed to be the real ticket for my sister and I to get out. The county said they would look into it. My sister and I went to my dad’s the following weekend, and went back to mom’s on Sunday night. 5am the following morning SWAT shows up and sweeps the house. They find nothing. Huh? After SWAT leaves and the dust is clear, Joe turns to me and says “you sneaky little f***. I knew they were coming. Someone from the county stopped by this weekend and told me this was going to happen. Nice try.” This was when I gave up. I mean, how unfortunate do things have to get before someone gives us real help?

I was accepted to St. Cloud State University my senior year of highschool and was extatic to not only be the first college student in the family, but to finally be able to move on to somewhere better. I was looking forward to leaving behind the chaos and bad memories and moving on to better things. Then I applied for a student loan, and found out my identity had been stolen. This was the first time I had ever requested to have my credit checked, and somehow someone had accumulated over $20,000 in debts at various banks around the country using my information before I had even turned 18. This shut down my dreams of getting away, and went on to bus tables while my friends were going to college. To this day, I think about the identity theft and the only people that would have had my information were my parents and Joe as he shared my mom’s lock box where she stored my documents. I don’t think I’ll ever find out who did it, though.

Well, once us kids turned 18 dad has kinda moved out of the picture. He has a second family and hardly gives me the time of day to give him a phone call, even on holidays. The last time I asked him for anything was for him to help with my class ring, which he not only said no but berated me for asking him for money after all of the child support (that us kids never really benefitted from) he paid.

My mom passed away after a car accident 10 years ago. As much as it seems that I may not have painted her the best picture so far, she was truly a loving mother and went out of her way to show us love in her own ways. She was the rock and core of the family. After days of hospital stays, talking with doctors, and hearing results we finally decided it was time to take her off of life support. It devastated us.

Almost immediately after mom’s passing, we found that she had left everything to Joe. The house and property, her belongings, and insurance. Joe basically used most of the insurance to pay off the house which is now his and lives in, he gave us kids a chance to go through some of mom’s possessions, and that was it. My sister, brother and myself have been on our own ever since.

I have worked very hard to make an honest living for myself. Money has always been tight, but I’ve grown up to be a frugal and simple person. Of course employment is limited without a degree or college education, but I make the most of it.

Last year I was injured in a fall that put me in the hospital for a few days. While there I learned that I have severe damage to my lower and mid back, and a condition due to a bruised spinal cord called peripheral neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy effects people in different ways, but in my case it severely effects balance, focus, speech, and there is intense numbness in arms and legs especially the hands and feet. My job at the time was a bank teller. I was the only teller, so it was difficult to return to work with these new symptoms. It is hard to write or count money when you can’t feel your hands. It’s hard talking to customers when you are constantly stuttering and losing words you are trying to say. It’s hard to balance when you’re running between 3 different stations taking care of 3 different customers. Anyway, eventually my condition got to the best of me. I was starting to make mistakes mostly because of the loss of hand function. Mistyping amounts, scanners reading my handwriting incorrectly, not being able to separate money. I was reprimanded at work for depositing money into an incorrect account. They already knew my situation. I told my manager I would do my best to not let this happen again, but asked if he could look into hiring an extra teller. The bank was a smaller one that was new in the city, but our customers had increased 10x from when I started as the only teller 3 years prior. He agreed to look into hiring. Three months went by without a hire, and I hurt my back again moving heavy coin bags while organizing the vault. The doctor recommended a couple of days from work. I returned to work to find that I had made another mistaken deposit, and was let go from my job. I feel the deposit was used more as an excuse to get around to their real issue with my physical disadvantage and needing time off of work. I know tellers at other locations had made many more mistakes than I had, and up until my injury, my attention to detail was always praised.

Now, it’s been a few months since I have been let go. I have applied to dozens of places, but with no luck. I have been fortunate enough to find a few side jobs to keep some groceries on the shelf and kibble in my dog’s dish. I have never had to apply for a job with a physical condition before which is why I feel my employment search has been so unfortunate.

I am writing for help. I have never really had much help in life. I was taught it doesn’t hurt to ask for help, but in my life it has hurt. Many times. I would love to feel what it’s like to have my head above water and take a fair breath of relief. I don’t think I’ve felt that since I was about 7 years old.

I’m at the point where I’m inching to being evicted by my best friend. He has been very patient and understanding, but I feel awful owing him and being in financial debt with my best friend. My car was repossessed on Sunday. It’s paid off a little over half way but I have nothing to get it back right now. I’m hopeful I will be able to collect it or at least afford an Uber to gather my possessions in the vehicle.

If you have taken the time to read all of this about me, I want to thank you. This is not something that I would usually do, but again, I am trying to believe in that it really is okay to ask for help and I could use it now more than ever.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards and God bless

Corey