Hi, Tammy,
when a person is down and out like you describe, what's needed is immediate relief in the form of money, food, solutions to health problems, and other tangible things. Pep talks aren't good for much. I know because I have been there.
Be that as it may, I will tell you this for what it's worth.
Seven years ago this past June, I had no job and no home. I owned three changes of clothes, and a car that was 600 miles away and had two flat tires, an exhaust system that needed replacing, and an expired inspection sticker. I had a long list of bad debts on my credit report.
I managed to get a full time job (that's the biggest factor in this success story, keeping a job). I managed to rent a single room in an old, run-down boarding house with seven other people. My attendance and performance on the job got the attention of a manager of another department and I was moved to a better job (no immediate raise, but substantial raises over the coming years). I stayed in the boarding house for about four years, becoming its manager after a while. Meanwhile, I started to pay off back debts on my credit. I did this a little at a time as I could scrape up the money, and I spoke with representatives of the companies in person, by telephone, to get them to understand that I was serious and get their cooperation.
After four years in the boarding house, I moved in with my girlfriend and began splitting the cost of her house payment, still nickel-and-diming my bad debt record. After five years on that job, she got a better paying job in Dallas and I came here with her. I took a couple of months off from work while she supported us, and studied hard to build my skills in my field for the fiercer competition I expected to find in Dallas (it turned out I was already ahead of most of them, but I had no way of knowing that til I got here). After three months I got hired for a position paying exactly double what I had been making at the previous job. A year later, my girlfriend and I split up and I rented a house for myself. Still continued to pay off back debts.
In June of 2002, seven years after I was jobless and homeless, I qualified for a mortgage and bought a house. A couple of months later my bank gave me a Visa card with a limit much higher than I would have had the nerve to ask for. A month after that Sears approved me for their version of Mastercard. I told my friend, "It seems that if you live on cash, you can't get credit. But if you stick your neck out on the chopping block to the tune of $121,000 for the next 30 years, they figure if you can balance that much debt you can balance a lot more, too."
I'm not saying that it works this quickly for everybody. Health is an important factor; I've seldom been sick and have probably only missed about 15 days of work in the past seven years. Being able to find a good job is also a factor. But my attitude had a lot to do with it too, Tammy. Through it all I worked hard at keeping a positive outlook, telling myself that I could handle the stresses that came up, the setbacks and disappointments. The atmosphere of hopelessness was just that... an atmosphere. It was a feeling, an attitude, that I either carried around inside me, or rejected in favor of hope and determination. The atmosphere didn't come with the setbacks; I either developed it myself, or chose not to.
I know that it's easy to say that now from the apparent security of my present position; and I'm well aware that it could all come crashing down around me with something as simple as a reorganization at work (the IT field is presently glutted with unemployed developers flipping fries and mowing lawns.).
I tell you this story so that you will know it's possible to rebuild from the ruins. It's slow going and takes patience and, most of all, strong determination and a strongly positive attitude. But those things feed on themselves; nurture them and they will become a habit and a way of life.
I hope things pick up for you very soon. Blessings.
Fred