Has anyone else found homesteading to be hard on their relationship?

Full circle funny that is the farm name. But what can I do with a wrecked back, just lifting four bags of feed hurts, every time I get hay I hurt for two days after in my back. I wore my self out in good faith. If he had not left in five years the mortgage would have been paid off, now I still have seven due to he refinanced it right before I found out he was cheating. I think he knew he was leaving and he must have a some reason to lengthen it. I think he was hoping I would not wake up when I tried to commit suicide after the train wreck he made of our life and our finances trying to give money to his girlfriend who was upside down in her mortgage on a house she planned to flip, but 2008 caught her and her house was getting reprocessed. I got the court to make him pay the money he extracted from our house equity, we wer never close to over leveraged. Our farm was bought for Avery good price and we only refinanced down to lower interest rates and a fifteen from a thirty year mortgage so we wer in good shape but then I found he was cheating and giving her money. Anyway now I have no money to invest in the maintainance of the property and too many mouths to feed cause of course I kept all the animals. Counting cats dogs horses and goats that was 15 at the time. I now am down to nine. I have an obligation to the horses and the pets. The horses all worked for their living. None were just pleasure horses, each did work with me as a therapy and birthday pony, a work horse and a track lead pony. They have earned the right to live though all are now old, too old to sell and the mare has EPM. I have decided to go back to school, since I am no longer strong enough to do the work for sweat equity, I think I want to find away to work in some way in environmental science edu. I was already told by a female counselor at the college I won't get hired because I am too old. I felt like punching her. What the hell , when I thought I was considered useless after my marriage fell apart I was berated for giving up, yet when I show reasonable ambition I am told I am too old. Her advice was for me to stay in my job as CNA wiping ungrateful people's asses who demand more than the contract states and I got fired for deciding to stop running errands and putting up shoving and painting. None are part of a CNA job , but I was told that it was that or he would get someone else and I really needed the money. Every time I stood up for myself I was told I was being a bitch, every time I lay down and accepted the bad stuff I was told I was a quitter. I am tired. I have fought thi cultures toxic ways for a long damn time and I am tired. But when I gave up on life I recieved the harshest judgements from family. Every one told me that he telling me to go ahead a take the pills, he didn't care, that was horrible. Here is the problem, no one ever faced him and told him that to his face. Yet family did tell me it was just a trick to get sympathy, funny since that is something I do not expect from them. I was told if I really wanted to kill myself I would have succeeded. The fact that I took five or six full bottles of sleeping pills, antidepressants, muscle relaxers means nothing. They never talked to the ambulance crew or saw the invoice that listed showed the price for extreme lifesaving messures that I was charged for. For some reason my family always thinks I am the one wrong. It took many counseling hours to understand invalidation and scapegoating in a disfunctional family. It has taken seven years for me to rebuild my beliefs that came crashing down that one horrible week. Now I am just worn out. Yet I still need to live as I promised my daughter I would never do that again and have worked to get past that. But Jesus I am wore out. I dream of a tiny house of 400 sq feet, two acres and no animals but my dog to care for. Just me and someplace easier to take care of. I got nothing to prove anymore. I built a place that was really bountiful, if others did not think it was worth the effort it was not their life. But really all I want to do now is grow a few potatoes and tomatoes, take care of a small place, take care of just me. But I need a job and I will never work in some crappy cashier job to satisfy others that told me I was just playing around by trying to live sustainably, that it is all On my way! Game not to be taken seriously. I don't know if anyone else has come up on this attitude, that we are treehuggers with no sense of reality. Why environmentalists are so sneered at by so many if your middle class or working class. That is something only for the rich, or niave kids. Yet time after time the warnings off out population, climate change and loss of life of all kinds on earth have come true. The species are going extinct at horrible rates, the water is becoming a real problem, fracking does cause earthquakes and water pollution of well supposed to be to high up to be effected. They either get laughed at, pepper sprayed or sneered at, yet most of the warnings are the truth. We are the only group called terrorist that never killed any one, indeed we respect life deeply. I guess I will keep on fighting, but damn I am so tired of it all.

/r/homestead Thread Parent