Life Shattered: A Fight to Keep Going

We are not taught how to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. We can work hard, pay our taxes, be honest, respectful, and law abiding citizens, avoid taking risks, live within our means, maintain healthy credit scores, and always follow our moral compass, and it won’t necessarily mean a thing. In the end, it’s not up to us. The lives that we build for ourselves, can abruptly and unapologetically be torn down at any time and for no apparent reason whatsoever. I learned this on my own.

When COVID began in early 2020, I, like many others, had to make adjustments in my life in order to minimize the impact it would have on me. The impact it would have on my life would primarily be financial, since my hours were cut to part time. This meant that I would have to supplement my income, which would be easy. Between buying and selling on e-bay, and sharing my house space with roommates, I have literally been supplementing my primary income since I moved out of my parents home more than thirty years ago. Thirty years of additional work and a lot of personal sacrifice, and with only one purpose in mind. The security of my future. My end game. Although my life never had much of a playbook, I always knew I was working hard for something wonderful. So in this respect, it wouldn’t matter to me how long the pandemic’s reign of terror would last. I wasn’t about to let COVID touch any of it.

One year ago, and four years after COVID began, it was all over for me. I had lost pretty much everything. My job of seven years, my home of seventeen, all of my savings, and most of my possessions. The enormous debts that had accrued in such a short window of time, had decimated my credit score which had been 801 just a year earlier. Looking back, I am still unable to figure out what I could have done differently.

Preparation: In a way, I had been preparing for COVID for decades. When I purchased my home in 2006, I put a hundred thousand dollars down, and over the course of seventeen years, the equity had grown to become more than three hundred thousand dollars. But when I needed it during the pandemic, I wasn’t allowed to touch a single penny.

Resources: Before I had solar panels attached to my roof in 2021, I had done more than enough research on them. Between the federal tax incentive, and the nationwide average ROI of 4.4%, I understood it would be a wise investment. When my home sold in 2024 however, it was a 100% loss. Including the ripple effects, my solar investment yielded a loss greater than a hundred thousand dollars making this the single biggest financial catastrophe of my life.

Opportunities: In 2021, Biden released the Pandemic Unemployment Act, or PUA. Several months after I collected roughly 60% of the benefits I had been approved for, the Department of Commerce claimed an error had been. Although I would spend months writing letters and making phone calls in order to resolve a clerical error, I was unable to speak to a single person in order to correct it. And until I did so, any income that I earned from a second job, would have been garnished.

Sacrifice: Waking up one morning with my two dogs in the back of my truck, just so I could rent out my house, is a pretty big sacrifice. And that’s how I spent my Thanksgiving, in 2022. And, as everybody else was waking up on Christmas morning in 2023, I was on my tenth straight hour of re-sanding my hardwood floors. My house was already listed for sale, and so my fight had turned from saving it, to maximizing the sale’s potential.

Look. To be completely honest here, I’m having a horrible time trying to write this. I'm tired of trying to explain this, and I'm tired of even thinking about it. The simple fact is, the last five years of my life have been an absolute hell. If my house had simply burned down to the ground, I could have written this in five minutes. Fire is tangible. People can relate to it and understand it. A windfall of misfortune is not. I have spent five years (and counting) trying to survive the floodwaters of misfortune. If the problem's and my failed attempts to resolve them were akin to a fire ant's bite, then I would have easily died in the swarm.

I purchased a used 22 foot travel trailer for my dogs and I to temporarily live in, so I could figure what I would need to do in order to start my life over. After all, during the four years I had been fighting, I never even once considered the possibility that I wouldn’t be capable of winning, until I lost. As I said to my family in an email last year, “All that I have worked for, was working for, wanted to do, aspired to be, dreamed of becoming, having, or owning - everything! - all of it! - is either in jeopardy, is going, or is already gone!”. There was no embellishment at all in that statement.

Any future I had would need to start with what little I had left. My only course of action would be the one that allowed me to do as much as I could myself. I decided I would purchase cheap desert property, and hire contractors for the infrastructure. Digging trenches for the electrical, plumbing, and septic drains myself, would help save money. I calculated that by doing that, I would have enough left over for one or two tiny houses that I would rent out, and a metal shed or building for myself to live in. Since it only took me three days to buy the house in Wilmington that I enjoyed for seventeen years, purchasing some dirt property for cash, shouldn't take more than a day or two. I walked into a realtor's office in Deming New Mexico with a tract of land already picked out. I made a very good offer and it was approved that day. Although it should gone smoothly, I failed to factor the 'misfortune' that continued to plague my existence, into my plan. It turned out that the listing was inaccurate, the deal fell through, and it would be another seven months before I would be able to accomplish the first step of purchasing some dirt. This past Monday, I closed on two acres of property just outside of Bisbee, Arizona. This delay ate through another chunk of what I had left, and thus I had to make further changes, eliminating the plan of building a couple of tiny rental houses.

The life I had built, was gone and I understood that. But all I've been trying to do in recent months, has been to put my hand back on the first and bottom most rung of life's ladder, just as I did when I was a teenager, and start over. But even that is becoming seemingly impossible to do. A working well, a functioning septic, and some basic electrical so that I have some light and air in the big storage shed that will double as my home in the middle of the Arizona desert, more than a thousand miles away from my nearest friend or relative. God only knows, I have worked too hard to have to start over from scratch, but this is the hand that I've been dealt. The amount that I need, is actually pretty uncertain. The amount I put down as my goal, is really nothing more than my ultra-conservative, best guess estimate. Anything extra, will go toward other conveniences. Having windows for my new home. Perhaps a microwave, stove, or some new dog beds for my boys. Who knows! Maybe I'll strike it rich and even be able to afford a toilet bowl for myself this Christmas. Of course, all of my successes remain contingent on normalcy, which has completely gone the way of the Dodo, in recent years.

One last thing. In order to post this, I will have no choice but to surrender my fierce independence, which has been an intricate part of my existence for as long as I can remember. Whatever the future holds for me, it grieves me to know that it will no longer be my own, but rather one built on a foundation of charity from others. I understand that the life that was my own, is now behind me. But with help from others, maybe there is a sliver of hope that I will have enough for a fresh start, at least.

I love you all very much, and I hope everybody is doing well. I appreciate the time you have taken to read this, and regardless if you are able to help me out or not, I hope that you will at least share it with others. - Eric