The Slide
On the months when trying was not enough — and the night we sat down to pack.
I don’t think people talk enough about what it feels like to realize you’re slipping.
Not all at once. Not in some big, dramatic way.
Just… slowly.
Bills a little later than they should be. Doing the mental math more often. That quiet feeling in your chest that something’s off, even if everything still looks fine from the outside.
And then you do what you’re supposed to do. You adjust. You cut back. You move things around. You try to stay ahead of it.
Because that’s what responsible people do, right?
They fix it.
Except sometimes you can feel yourself trying to fix it—in real time—and it’s still not enough.
You’re not ignoring it. You’re not being reckless. You’re not checked out.
You’re trying.
And it’s still slipping.
The past few months have felt like that for us.
A lot of small things that weren’t supposed to be big things.
Money that should have been there… wasn’t. Doors I thought might open… didn’t.
Trying to figure out work that fits around being a parent—and realizing how few options actually make sense.
Watching things start to come together, just enough to feel hopeful— and then watching it slip out of reach again.
Over and over.
You tell yourself you’ll catch it. That you just need a little more time, a little more effort.
And then you hit a point where you realize— this might not be something you can fix by trying harder.
I’ve spent most of my life looking for something that feels like home.
Not just a place, but that feeling of being settled. Of not having to brace for the next change.
And I want that so badly for my kids. More than anything.
I think they have that in me. I think they have that in us.
But I still want to give them more than that.
And it’s hard to feel like you’re doing everything you can—and it’s still not quite enough to create that kind of stability yet.
There’s something I think needs to be said plainly:
We shouldn’t feel embarrassed that we’re struggling to sustain ourselves in a system that is getting increasingly harder to live in.
That’s not a personal failure. That’s reality right now.
It doesn’t take much for a slip to turn into a slide.
And once it does, it’s a lot harder to stop than people want to admit.
Right now, my family is in that slide.
We are doing the best we can. We are trying. We are making the next best decision at every step we can.
We are keeping our kids stable.
And we are still losing our house.
That’s the truth.
Not because we didn’t care. Not because we didn’t try. Not because we were irresponsible.
Because sometimes the margin just isn’t there.
We like to think this is one of those things that only happens to other people.
I used to think that too.
Only irresponsible people get evicted.
Only lazy people lose their homes.
That could never happen to me.
But the real truth is this:
You can care. You can try. You can swallow your pride and ask for help. You can do everything right—
and still lose the house anyway.
Our court date is a few days away.
We have to be out in less than two weeks.
I don’t know yet where we’re going.
When the sheriff’s notice came the other day, I cried. Hard. My partner sat in silence, staring at nothing.
Thirty minutes later, the kids got home from school.
So I washed my face.
We made dinner. Went on a bike ride around the neighborhood. I put on my roller skates and fell hard on my butt. We all laughed.
We had quesadillas and listened to music.
It was a good night.
I put the kids to bed and kissed their smiling faces.
Then I went downstairs—
and started packing.