Life Long Residents Struggling to make it
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2/10/2013
My mother, brother, and I are life long residents of Lake Charles. My father was from another state and died over eight years ago due to alcoholism. Before he moved here, he was very ambitious and happy, but throughout the years of his life living here, he became depressed, lost his ambition, and was in a major rut until his death. Now, all three of us are going through the same exact thing he went through. We have been living jobless for over eight years and have been struggling to get back on our feet since his death. We have college educations that we can't use like for example, my mother has bachelor's degree and can't find one job in her field and is in over $87,000 student loan debt. She was supposed to graduate with a math degree and computer technology, but some strange occurrences happened with the school that prevented her from graduating in her original degrees. I have two associate degrees that I can't find no work in and my brother has an EMS certificate and can't use it.
My mom is now working and stays sick all the time without health insurance and is barely pulling in minimum wage. I am unemployed most of the time and my brother works at a fast food joint for over two years and can't get out of it like my mother can't get out of her job. In our opinion, this city is narrow minded and thinks everybody is supposed to be married with kids and in due respect my mother was married for over 25 years until his death. I am not getting married which isn't nobodies business, but most of the people ask me if I am married or have kids even on the job whenever I do work which is hardly ever. They seem to not to accept you if you don't have this which I don't. It is my personal choice. Also, some of them also treat you like dirt if you don't fall in the clicks here because of the who knows who thing. They give us dirty looks for no reason and change on you like they act like they are your best friend one minutes and then change after that for the worst. We are not happy here and stay stressed out all the time. We fight every day do the negative things they do to us and we keep sinking and sinking further downward. We keep losing money do to high priced car insurance due to the way they drive here to also trying to get oil changes and they overcharge you and do work on your car without asking you for permission. This is happening to us and nobody seems to understand what it is like being way below poverty and are having hard time making it. Like I said the wages suck here, no jobs, and some of the people are not very nice. We have more to share, but is a long list of things. They treat you like you are stupid, there is respect for your things, and they make themselves at home with your stuff like coming on your property without asking. They can't drive here at all with the road rage problem or the super slow driving or they pull out in front of you when they see you coming down the road. The list goes on and on.
Bp | Lake Charles, LA