Bitterness

I apologize in advance if this post starts getting a little too heavy for some people.

My husband and I were running a business in Australia providing labour and machinery for my FIL's business.  To cut a long story VERY short, we fell out with my FIL over financial issues (he was underpaying us for our work) and we ended up having to sell off our stock and assets to pay off a huge chunk of debt.  We walked away from the business still owing alot of money and needing to declare ourselves bankrupt.  FIL still owes us a huge chunk of money but has refused to pay us a cent.  We can't afford to take legal action so he has got away with not paying us (for now).

We had hoped, after all was said and done, that we could put some money aside as a deposit on a house or a block of land but we couldn't even do that as we had to pay out our loans and debts.  I guess I ought be grateful that we have a roof over our heads at the moment - the house we live in was provided to us as part of DH's employment contract where he works now - but I still carry this resentment and envy toward people who own or are paying off the homes they live in.  Even watching Location, Location, Location gets me on edge, I see these rich people looking at houses and I just wonder where on earth they are getting all this money from to afford such beautiful homes.  I get angry when I think about how other people are really making something of their lives while we struggle to even save a little.  Where did we go wrong?

Perhaps the universe was stepping in and aligning people and circumstances to force us to take that holiday to the UK that would ultimately lead to us living there.  If things had turned out the way DH wanted, his father would have retired and we would have got ourselves into even deeper debt so that we could run a farm on our own.

Despite the bitterness and the "why us" self pitying, I remind myself that there MUST be a reason why we are here. Jon Gabriel's business partner booked him on a different flight to the fateful United Airlines Flight 93, then when his business collapsed a short time later, Jon said that his life had been spared twice. So maybe OUR lives have been spared from the failure of our business and we were given the opportunity to move to the UK and start afresh.

That is the only way I have been able to reconcile the losses we have endured over the last 5 years. 

We lost not only our business but four pregnancies along the way.  Every time I see a pregnant woman or a mum with a young baby I flinch involuntarily or I stare at them while feeling pain in my heart and wondering if that will ever be me.  I dread pregnancy announcements from friends and family, I have even distanced myself from certain family members because of their apparent ease in conceiving and popping out babies, I don't even want to hear about the wonderful lives they are leading in their million dollar rural homes surrounded by horses and babies and boats and four wheel drives.  I guess this is the part I am having the most difficulty reconciling, that they are all doing so well for themselves while my own life has been reduced to a few cubic metres of furniture (most of which is still stuck in Australia because we can't afford to ship it to the UK!).  That is what I struggle to accept the most. 

DH and I have worked so damn hard, we busted our gut and ended up with what?  I try so hard to just be grateful for what we have, we are in a much better position than many other people.  Who am I to complain?

So I guess the whole point of this rather long post is that this is probably one great big FAT switch for me.  Thanks for reading, I do feel like a load has been lifted now.