(Author’s note: my apologies for the delay in posting, well actually not posting at all lately. Having been bedridden for 14 days in January I find myself way past being down. Waaaaay past. I’m going to have to force myself to take action, do something, anything, or it’s never going to get better. In the meantime, here’s a look at my day from hell today.)
There’s a reason for the title, as I find myself reacting to a bad situation on a day that started off well. I almost felt half decent this morning, both physically and mentally. Every day has its challenges when you deal with both chronic pain and depression, but today had started off promising. The day wound down with thoughts of ending it all as it’s the only way I can see to get out of this miserable world I’ve created.
I need to confess that suicidal ideations (I hate that word) have been peeking out from the back of my head for the past few weeks. I’m reaching my point of surrender, the point where I don’t know if I can take one more night of intense pain and nausea.
It drove me to reach out to one of my best friends and wave the flag asking for help. She reached back immediately and I’m ever grateful for her kind words and thoughts. I love her like a sister, or as I love those close to me, which is how I feel about those folks I rely on.
I had slept well last night, which makes a world of difference after being ill and getting 3 hours sleep in the 3 days. I was so sick that I paced, tried to lay down, paced, tried again. I looked at my iPhone on the coffee table, watched the half hour turn to the next hour and so on. It was so bad I even went up to bed twice in the middle of one dreadful night, waking the hounds and Mrs. K in the process.
A good night’s sleep, like last night, provides major relief in both pain and depression, as long as it’s not so drug induced I wake in a stupor.
My plan for today was to spend an hour or two on 3 different tasks. Task one was to simply play piano and finally record a clean version of my latest song. By clean I mean played to perfection. Even though I wrote it and no one would know one bad note or another, except myself. I’m now finding the neuropathy moving into my hands, and it’s nearly impossible to play to perfection, but I try.
Hey, score one for the Kyd for at least trying.
The second task was to complete my 2025 FBAR. What’s an FBAR you’re wondering? It’s actually the Foreign Bank Account Reporting, a requirement for all US citizens (me) to report all finances at banks and brokerage houses outside of the United States.
As an expatriate living in Canada, all my finances are in foreign institutions. You can do an FBAR on the government website, it’s easy but time consuming. The report is basically filling in a ton of blanks, starting with name and address, Social Insurance Number, email and phone.
Then you list out the institution or bank, the account numbers and value of each in US dollars. There’s 6 entries for me this year, and since I’ve done it a lot I was prepared.
So entered everything, and I mean everything. I hit the last next button, but was surprised to see that this year they were requiring a photo ID. What they got was my Ontario drivers license with about 10% of my face showing up. Best I could do.
One last click on “Next” and up pop a payment screen. Hmmm…this is odd, and at first thought it was simply another government cash grab.
It then hit me, right beforeI entered my credit card info, that this was not the government website. Everything looked exactly like the official website I had seen in the past, except the license requirement and payment.
Then I looked at the URL. It was a dot us site, not the correct dot gov.
I had been had by a phishing site and they now have access to all my data. Everything. Repeat…everything. Turns out there are several threads on Reddit about this site, and other fools that went as far as actually using a credit card on the site. Several had reported this site to Google, but there it is at the top of the search for FBAR.
Google has their money from the ad and simply doesn’t give a damn. They could care less. What’s next? Websites for child porn or drug dealers.
I went into a tailspin, absolutely collapsed under the weight of what I had just done. I fell for it, like an old man you see on the consumer reports warning you not to be this stupid.
Missus K tried her damnedest to calm me down, but it was too late. I was beating myself up, and beating bad. I was on the verge of tears and filled with rage. Of course the long string of cuss words didn’t help…much.
I have spent the last 9 hours trying to get hold of banks and credit reporting companies like Equifax and Transunion. But just the Canadian affiliates, I haven’t even started in the US.
Trying to get through all the red tape with bad phone numbers, chat bots and FAQs that got me nowhere. It took hours just trying to get through to a live person, even at my own bank. This web search and all the road blocks just added to the frustration and fueled my anger at everyone in the world.
I had been taken, royally. I was bursting inside, and seriously considering walking outside and either stepping in front of a city bus, or lying in a snowbank to freeze to death.
It’s now 11:00 pm, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake and fuming.
I know already I won’t sleep tonight. If I live through the night, I have a full day of changing bank accounts and contacting a ton of banks and brokers who do their damnedest not to be contacted.
I can’t tell myself everything will be alright, because I have no idea if it ever will be.
Being the person I am, and dealing with everything else that has fallen on my shoulders has me on the edge. On the razors edge, even more so before this disaster, when I was already at the point of retiring from the game of life.
So am I over reacting by wanting to end all of this pain and depression and frustration with life?
Not in my mind, I’m perfectly justified in my opinion.
If I make it through this night it will be a miracle. If you believe in a higher power, think of me when you say your prayers.
Maybe another miracle will happen…
Maybe not.