Partner and I went from living the dream, to struggling.

December last year, my partner and I were on top of the world. We just had a check-up confirming my pregnancy, and, while this little baby was not 100% planned, we happily started planning the next few months and years of our lives together. We were going to buy a house – a house we had fallen in love a few weeks ago already – and have a wedding in the nice yard we had out in the back. I was going to take a break from work as I had some medical issues, and take a break from my post-graduate studies to focus on the new baby. He had a great job with great benefits and we had the financial stuff down to a T.

A couple of months later, on the same damn day we closed on the house, my partner got furloughed due to some political decisions which I’m sure most of us are aware of by now.

At first, we were both so hopeful. You’ll surely get a job soon, we’ll say, reassuring each other. It was the right decision to get the house, at least the three of us will have a roof over our head. However, as time goes on, we are slowly feeling the stress and the burn out, and the lingering question of, “have we done the right thing bringing a baby into this world with all this financial stress?”

My partner, bless his heart, will not allow me to feel stressed over the situation. He started driving for a ride-sharing app and delivering food to help us get by, and while the pay is far from what he was earning before, we are definitely, thankfully, not going hungry. This is a man who has been working his ass off the last couple of months to be able to scrape up some money for the mortgage, watching as our savings slowly dwindle. He will never let me feel the stress and the anxiety he feels, but I can see it in his face every time he checks his email for feedback from one of the many companies he’s applied to… 2 months of sending applications for nothing.

Meanwhile, here I am, feeling so bad about the situation and the timing that he will never know that I’m battling through some stress and depression of my own, too. I feel so guilty that I’m unable to work, and I feel so bad knowing he’s gone from leading an international team to getting people their pizza or groceries. I feel so guilty every time he tells me to get something I’m craving for in the grocery, knowing that having some ‘wants’ in our grocery list can set us back a couple of bucks. I feel so bad asking him to pick up free baby furniture that people are giving away on social media because I know he would have loved to shop for those with me. Lastly, I feel bad for thinking that I shouldn’t have continued with this pregnancy because we truly couldn’t have had the worst timing in the world.

I’m sitting next to him right now while he looks for more jobs to apply to. I love this man so much; he’s given so much of himself to me and to our baby and I appreciate all that he has done for us thus far. But god I am so tired of the stress and the anxiety. I’m not sure how much longer I can hold on while still appearing strong for me, him, and our baby who’s due in June.

I have so many things to say about this whole political thing that got us into this mess, but that’s for another day. Right now, I’m just praying for a miracle – praying that all of this sacrifice will be for something meaningful.