(3/ 4) “We worked so much that Stacy and I barely saw each...

(3/ 4) “We worked so much that Stacy and I barely saw each other. We were doing better financially, but the bills had really piled up. You can’t grow in this city. I was raised in Puerto Rico. When you work in Puerto Rico– you buy some land and you build a house. You can see the growth. But nothing grows in this city. You work, and you work, and you work, but you live in a box and nothing changes. It all adds up to nothing. We were surviving, but we always seemed to be on the edge. I could handle it because I’m laid back. I can live my life without thinking about tomorrow. And the kids were fine because they’re kids. But Stacy wasn’t fine. She saw all the homeless families on the street, and the families in the shelters, and she was convinced that was going to be us. She was always so worried. She was stressed all the time about the rent and the food and the bills. She was driving me crazy with the nagging. We kept getting in stupid fights. I kept telling her: ‘Stacy, you’ve got to stop worrying about all this bullshit!’ We did have our little moments where we’d go to the beach or the park and forget about things, and we’d have a moment of peace. But those moments never lasted. Every morning Stacy would wake up and smoke a cigarette, and you could just see the unhappiness in her face. I should have left. I should have given up and moved us all back to Pennsylvania. Instead I started smoking too much weed, and trying some other stuff. And that made it worse.”