Some people seem to overlook this fact way too often..

I have a friend I've known for most my life. She's a bit older than me, but w were always friends and thought we still kept in touch - but the friendship kinda went on hold and we lost contact for a bit. When we reconnected a few years ago, she was a mom living with her parents, single, and trying to raise a child. She had just graduated from a non-profit local college here with something in nursing and actually appeared to be turning her life around. It was awesome to reconnect with her, meet her daughter, just all around chill and go back into the memory bank when we hung out.

At the time she was dating this guy, and things were pretty serious. She often spoke of marriage, and even though he wasn't the father of her daughter, she said he treated her daughter like his own and her daughter just adored him. Then one day, she informs me he's moving out of state for a bit to his parents where he has a job lined up. It was never going to be a permanent thing - just something to help get him back on his feet after losing a handful of jobs. She was uneasy about the move, but didn't want to join him because of her daughter. They both agreed to it eventually and he was supposed to return a few months, to a year, later.

Well, while gone, he met someone else and notified her over Facebook he wasn't returning.

That broke her. Ever since, she went into a funk. She didn't do anything - just sat at home attempting to take care of her daughter but failing at that because she didn't have an income. No job. She relied heavily on her parents, and this is a girl in her 20s, because she didn't even put to use her career. It was frustrating and it didn't seem to matter. She kept pretending she was actively searching for a job, a big reason, at the time, she couldn't smoke up with me (and then started using spice - because she didn't want to fail a drug test) and there was never anything. Eventually, though, she landed a job at a gas station. I didn't judge. A job is a job and she could finally start something.

Well, she got fired for selling cigarettes to an underage person after only a few months of working - if that.

So, she returned to her fucked up life of just staying home and doing nothing. I probably enabled some of it by going over there on the weekends to drink with her (we'd get shit faced) but I also had a life - a job, a car and whatnot. Eventually, though, she met this dude online and he seemed decent enough. He started coming over and hanging out and I could tell fast that things were getting serious.

Then she told me: he was in prison for ten years and is listed as a child sex offender. What the fuck? And she has a child! But she said his story was a 15 year old he fucked on his 18th birthday going to the police. I don't know if that's true - but regardless, he was on probation and it specifically said he could not hang around children. No amusement parks - no parks, in fact - no movie theaters during the day or any other form of entertainment where children could be.

I was uneasy and told her as much. But it's her life, I guess...

So, she meets this guy. Still has no job. Still drinks. Still pretty much relies on her parents to support her child. She's now 30. One night, gets into a huge fight (this was this past summer) and her dad finally throws her out of the house. Now, she's couch surfing. Her daughter is living at home, and she's sobbing to me asking how she can get on her feet and get her daughter back.

The first thing we both agree on is that she needs to get a job. She really doesn't. Eventually, a friend takes her in and she's hanging out there now. No job. Just chilling on this friend's couch. I go over and visit most weekends and keep prodding her to get a job. Finally, after a month or so being on the street, she lands one - and then promptly loses it because she gets sick. She lands another one and then admits she can't do it. It's not to her liking (beggars can't be choosers!).

Then things kinda feel like they're turning around. She goes back to the gas station she was fired from before and lands a job. She holds that job for more than a month. She's now talking about moving into an apartment with Sex Offender. At this point, I don't know what to make of the guy. If his story is true, and he really did sleep with a 15 year old who told him she was 17 (he had just turned 18), I can understand it. But I've always been skeptical, even if the dude seems like an okay guy.

But she tires of the gas station job. She's up in arms when her shift is given to a newbie - but it's given because she's always late and calls in all the fucking time. After a couple months, she bails.

Jobless again. But now she's tired of living with that one friend, barely paying any rent, because she has to do dishes and chores even though she doesn't spend much time at the house (tough luck?). So, she bails there, too, and is now homeless. Her boyfriend sneaks her into his house (he lives with his parents, who don't like her) and, on weekends, they rent a cheap hotel room.

She gets another job, finally, around Christmastime - maybe a bit earlier. She's so excited. At this point, she's asking if I'll cosign a lease for an apartment (I told her no) and that this job has so much upward mobility and it's in the field she got her degree in (medical). I'm genuinely excited for her. She goes a few days, the next gets sick. I tell her, "hope you're not pregnant" and she responds, "idk" and I'm thinking to myself, fuck.

She continues to be sick. I don't know if she ever goes back to her job. Originally, she had asked me for a ride to her boyfriend's work after her job because she didn't have a car, so, I would hit her up after I'm off work asking if she needed me to pick her up and she keeps telling me she didn't go in today. Eventually, I stop asking. About a week later, though, I bring up her job and ask how it's going.

They fired her. Apparently because she smelled like smoke and works in a sterile environment. Ooookay. She maybe worked three days. So much for that job acting as starting point to bigger and better things.

Then she tells me, which I had suspected, she's pregnant. I left her a pretty long message that I was disappointed and her only response was that it was too late.

She's pregnant. Jobless. In love with a man on probation as a sex offender (until 2016) and she already has an 11 year old daughter she doesn't even take care of now who lives with with her mom.

Now she's moved 40 minutes out of the city with some friends because they offered her a new starting point. She says this one is for real and she's so excited to get things right.

Worse, the sex offender works at a job that can't pay more than $10 an hour, which isn't entirely bad except that will be their sole income.

I guess I'd feel hopeful that maybe this is the time she turns it around but there have been so many chances of that happening and they just don't. It was supposed to happen when she graduated college (it didn't). It was supposed to happen with the love of her life (it didn't). It was supposed to happen with her job at the gas station (it didn't). It was supposed to happen when she met this one guy (it didn't). It was supposed to happen when she was kicked out of her parents' house and really forced to grow up (it didn't) and now it's supposed to happen with this baby.

Call me skeptical. She'll be 31 in a few weeks.

tl;dr: friend who had child young, and has been a chronicle unemployed person, meets sex offender, falls in love, gets kicked out of her mom's house, stops being a parent, gets knocked up by sex offender and is now unemployed and has a sketchy living situation.

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