Texas Wine School

My life is at a standstill and I don’t know which direction to go in. Once upon a time I was busy, happy, married and a mom of 3 children. My husband of 16 years left me for another woman a couple of years ago, which left me on my own with a teenage daughter, our youngest. I was devastated of course, but I wasted no time in finding a good job and picking up the pieces, very aware that I was now the sole provider and protector of my child. After only 6 months I met someone wonderful, or so I thought. He was from a different country and culture, also from a different religion but we connected very quickly and it seemed like we were destined to be together forever. I gave up my media job to help him with his business and things were going well for almost a year. Long story short, because of a bad business venture, he lost a lot of money at the end of ’09 and urged me to drop everything, take my daughter out of school and move immediately to upstate New York with him to start another business. He owns an old dilapidated property up there which he wanted to transform into a successful hotel, but with very little funds and very little planning or time to plan, I thought it wiser to stay here in South Texas to let my daughter finish her Freshman year in high school. He agreed to stay here with us until we could all move together, but towards the end of January he decided to move north to live with his brother and family to “get a head start” as he called it. I was very upset and asked him to reconsider, but his mind was made up and he left very abruptly. I fell into a deep depression almost immediately. I had no job and very little money, and the economy is really bad around here at the moment. After a couple of weeks I became really exhausted with going to interviews and being rejected for work, and lapsed into a fog of despair, started drinking too much wine in the evenings to help me sleep better, and worrying constantly about the future. My partner calls most days, but sometimes he is impatient and so I haven’t told him about how bad I feel. I’m barely functioning right now. I attend to my daughter’s needs, cook her food, do her laundry, and still do my best to be a good mom for her, but part of me feels very isolated and sad, it’s like I’m just going through the motions. Prior to my fiance leaving we sat down at the last minute and did a budget. He assured me he had just enough funds to pay the mortgage on the New York property for 6 months, which would (he said) give him plenty of time to figure out some additional income, but after less than three months he has no money and has taken a job as a car salesman which barely covers his expenses. I was supposed to be selling my old house here in Texas in preparation for our move up there in June, but now he’s behind on the mortgage payments in NY, and the dream we had of building our future up there is looking more and more remote. I’m very disappointed and sad because I don’t see a way out of this. I don’t see how we can possibly manage to hang on and turn everything around with the threat of foreclosure looming. He said I shouldn’t worry so much, he would renegotiate the loan with the lender to reduce the monthloy payment, but so far he hasn’t even got around to calling them because he is “so busy. ” I love this man very much, he really feels like my soul mate in so many ways, but now I don’t know whether I can trust him and don’t know what to do. If I felt stronger I’d get out there and find a new career. If I had more money I’d even like to start my own business. Part of me knows I should take control, give him an ultimatum to fix the mess he has made up there, or come back here to live with us and begin all over again. I’m fearful of doing that though because I know he will never want to come back here as he hates this town we live in, and to be honest I can’t face going through another breakup. I was so looking forward to leaving this place and giving my daughter a better environment (too many drugs and gangs around here) but now I feel like we’ve been abandoned twice in two years. I’ve changed from someone who was once strong and confident into someone with little hope and even less ambition, a complete wimp. How do I find the strength to move forward and find some kind of direction? I have no family or friends around here, it’s only my daughter and me. I feel like I’m falling apart. Not crying or anything, just experiencing a horrible numbness and inertia, like I’m in a bad dream. Well, I have your answer right here. Do it for your daughter. Dont let her see you weak and give up.