For some reason, a lot of my co-workers end up telling me their life story. Completely unbidden, at that. I don't know what it is about me that inspires this confidence/disclosure; I certainly don't reciprocate in any way. Nor do I encourage it. And yet it keeps happening. These are their stories.
One cubemate I've had recently has 3 mortgages and no place to live. She started out with a house in a different state, then she moved back in town with her dying parents and the housing boom happened so she was unable to sell it. She bought her parents' house after they died and also had to buy the adjoining farm from her brother to keep the family land together. For some reason, the water pipe broke inside the house; she ended up successfully suing and winning a settlement from her insurance company, the majority of which was spent on lawyer fees. The house was gutted and she lost all of her belongings to mould damage. Most recently the roof leaked and she needs to refinance one of her 3 mortgages to get money out to fix the roof before it rots the house completely. Add to this the fact that she got a job with my company, out-of-state, and is now paying rent, on top of her 3 mortgages. Her life is a daily struggle to keep the banks from foreclosing on her houses and forcing her into bankruptcy.
Another co-worker was born in Vietnam and moved here when he was in his 20's. His father was in the army helping to fight the Communists (something we have in common; my parents/I are technically Communists) and spent 13 years in jail for that. He lived in a small village in Nowhere,Vietnam till he moved to the US and met his wife. He's got 2 kids and is now struggling with the 1st-2nd generational divide; his English is teddible while his kids, who were all born here, don't understand Vietnamese and have trouble understanding him. Typical American kids-Immigrant parents conflicts; sad but unavoidable.
A third gentleman, whom I shared a cubicle wall with for about a year, was separating from his wife, with 2 kids caught in the middle. He'd be on the phone with the mediator every week, listing all the petty ways the was out to screw him: she'd 'forget' where she put things that belong to him or not drop off the kids for the weekend. Because there were kids involved, she got to keep the house and he had to get an apartment. So's not to traumatize the kids any more, he elected to keep paying the mortgage rather then having them move out. Not that it helped, the kids were already screwed up; the eldest started having anger-management issues in school. Apparently, he got that from the wife, who was a thrower, of the fragile-glass variety. It was not explicitly stated but I always assumed that she was physically abusive. My coworker was upset the most that the wife would badmouth him to his children; trying to pit them against him, while he was trying to avoid getting them involved at all. I don't actually know what happened and how it all turned out; I moved out of the area and was no longer there for the mediation phone calls.
Like I've mentioned this happens to me fairly frequently. I do not mind, in fact I'm very interested in how other people perceive the world and am flattered that they trust me in this way. I consider it my duty to chronicle these stories. Traditionally, stories have been used to share and preserve knowledge across generations. Be it religious or nationalistic narratives, stories bring people together. Stories codify information from a multitude of sources into a single narrative that's meant to unite; be it the bible stories or the GW-Independence War myths. The stories I'm told will never figure into the larger narratives but they're not any less important.
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