I probably just need to rant. If you feel like reading it, go right ahead.

I have had a life-long problem with the reliability of other people. It started with my parents being divorced when I was five, taking my only, best friend, my dad, out of the picture most days of the week. Then, when I was seven, the man disappeared for 7 years due to a crack cocaine addiction. Now, he's good for a phone call, but he's got his own problems to deal with. I have issues with my mother I'd prefer not to go into, but long story short, I simply cannot rely on that person either. We don't speak, and it's because I have been burned by her way too many times in ways you honestly wouldn't expect from your own flesh and blood. [And please, spare me the sanctimonious "but its your mother, dude...", not everyone has a mother that acts like one.]

Can't rely on my family, so I've been struggling on my own for a while. Friends? I've always had trouble making friends and the ones I've made IRL have been little more than occasional companionship. I mean, I've never had a friend that would help me move, for example. That may be more commonplace these days I suppose.

I've always been distrusting, throughout my whole life other people have simply been a source of broken promises and outright torment. I tell the details of my life to some people and they wonder why I am actually a kind and sensitive person, instead of a misanthrope with a grudge against the world. I could have that attitude, but I don't see any point in being hateful towards individual people who have done me no harm.

Instead, I simply have my guard up, and for good reason. The past couple years, I've bounced from one unstable and temporary shelter to another, after being unemployed for a long time and just plain broke, I finally got a job and a place to stay. Within months of that happening, all my roommates decided to pack up and leave with only a week's notice.

A WEEK.

I found a place in time, that I could afford, but I soon found out that the place was a bug-infested hell hole with no hot water, no air conditioning, 1 working burner on the stove, half the electrical outlets in the bedroom didn't work, and roomates that would stay for a week or a month and then leave. Oh, and one of them literally tried to murder my other roommate with a gun at a range of about 4 feet through the bedroom window.

So I finally move out of there and get a new place to stay, having scrimped and saved at my new job to afford a place, if I split the rent. I am a dumb, dumb, dumb person and I got a place with a co-worker of mine who used to manage his own store. I figured this one would be responsible, since he's employed, works hard, and once held a position of greater responsibility than I have now.

How mistaken was I?

3 weeks into our year-long lease with the several hundred dollar penalty for breaking the agreement, he quits his job with no warning and informs me he's moving to North Carolina.

I am now screwed professionally because this guy was working 50+ hours a week as our ONLY full-time prep cook, and our store is already severely understaffed to the point where I can't even manage the store because I have to fill in for everyone else we don't have, but I am also now screwed personally because now I'm saddled with a lease agreement I can't afford.

Obvious solution is to get another roommate. Yeah, I know... and I'll have to grit my teeth and roll the dice on another person, and make sure I'm properly prepared to get shafted again.

I just don't understand people, and I want to believe there's better out there. I just haven't experienced it that much in real life.

Now, here on the .org, I've come across some excellent people.

Where the heck are you? Why do you only seem to exist on the internet? Why aren't there intelligent, responsible, reliable people like the ones I've met on here, down where I live?

I have just had it with people. I've never been able to rely on anyone except myself, and unfortunately, the world is not designed in such a way that self-reliance is enough. I always have to tie my fate to a one-sided business arrangement where I take all the risk, and the terms are dictated to me. Then in my personal life, I cannot just be by myself... I have to tie my home, security, financial stability, and privacy to someone else. Someone who invariably puts me over a barrel and uses me until I bleed.

I'm so tired of being surrounded by people, and yet feeling so utterly alone. I can deal with being poor and having to work hard, I just hate being screwed by other people for little or no reason at all, and being forced back into agreements with other people where I can get screwed again. I want to be by myself if I am the only person I can rely on, but I can't be by myself.

Need to raise the danged living wage so a person can afford to live as a single person, without having to pair off to split expenses. This isn't even a ritzy place to live, it's the fricking ghetto where people get shot at and there's cops everywhere constantly and my co-workers get robbed multiple times a year. You'd think you can find a single living situation here, but no.

People suck so much sometimes. But for me, it just seems like an endless vacuum of suckage, turned up to full blast.

All right, whiny rant over...