We were barely making it, living on rice and whatever light we could get from our cheap solar-powered garden lights. My husband, Eli, could hardly eat because of the stress, and I was the one trying to hold everything together—handling the bills, the meals, everything. But then came a day when I couldn’t anymore. Just one slip of the tongue, one sentence, and everything we had built from the scraps of our lives started to fall apart.
The faint yellowish glow from the solar lights flickered over our dinner table, casting shadows over the rice and beans in our bowls. They looked as unappetizing as they tasted.
I chewed the rice without really tasting it, my mind stuck on trying to figure out how I could make our gas money last through the week. A visit to urgent care earlier that month for a UTI had thrown our budget off track, costing us $75.
Eli sat across from me, poking at his food but barely eating any of it.
“You didn’t eat lunch again, did you?” I asked, noticing how loose his T-shirt hung on him.
Eli shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “Forgot. Then I wasn’t hungry.”
He tried to smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“You need to eat,” I said gently, my voice soft but firm.
“I will. I am.” He took a slow, deliberate bite, trying to prove something to me, then shut his eyes as he swallowed, as though it pained him.
“Is the nausea bad?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.
He sighed, pushing a few beans around on his plate. “Another bill came today. That construction guy who said he needed someone to help his electrician? Now he’s unavailable every time I go to the site.”
In other words, yes, the nausea was bad. Stress had knotted his stomach, but at least he was eating something.
I looked over at the pile of bills near the front door, taking in the sight of the new envelope on top.
Electricity bill, due in three days. Rent, due in ten. The student loan payment, already 15 days late. And now, this new bill—who knew what it was for?
My paralegal studies degree hung above the pile, an expensive piece of paper that had yet to bring in a single paycheck.
“But on the bright side,” Eli said, breaking the silence, “I got a busted laptop I think I can fix. The guy at the construction site was going to throw it out. If I get it working, we could sell it for $200.”
I nodded, forcing a smile. “That would be great.”
That was Eli, always seeing opportunity, always staying hopeful.
Even though his dreams of trade school had been put on hold two years ago because of his mom’s illness, he never stopped believing things would get better.
I loved that about him, even though I couldn’t always feel that same hope myself.
Eli finally set his fork down, his plate mostly untouched. He’d eaten maybe a third of his dinner. I’d wrap up the rest for his lunch tomorrow, which he’d probably forget to take.
After dinner, I grabbed the pile of bills and sat down on the old couch beside him with our budget notebook. The numbers still hadn’t magically improved.
“We’re going to make it,” Eli said quietly, not looking up from the circuit board he was working on.
I nodded, not feeling quite as confident. We always made it—just barely. It was only because I tracked every penny, worked every shift I could get, and said no to every small luxury.
Hours later, I glanced over and saw that Eli had fallen asleep sitting up, exhausted from a day of working hard for people who paid him next to nothing. I gently shifted his head onto my lap. He didn’t wake, just shifted a little and mumbled something I couldn’t make out.
How had we gotten here? Two years out of school, and this was our life: beans and rice under solar lights, counting every penny, and falling asleep from exhaustion.
Eli did manage to fix the laptop, and we posted it for sale on Craigslist. We got $150 for it, which immediately went toward the bills—but at least it was something.
The next day, I came home to chaos.
PC parts were scattered across the living room floor like a tech crime scene. Eli was sitting in the middle, hands tangled in his hair, staring at the disassembled desktop as if it had personally betrayed him.
“I thought I had it,” he muttered when I walked in.
I set my bag down, taking in the mess. “Another computer?”
He nodded miserably. “I told Mrs. Chen I could fix it.”
“It was just the power supply,” he continued. “It should’ve been easy. But then…” He gestured to the mess. “I think I fried the motherboard.”
I sat beside him, careful not to disturb the delicate arrangement of parts. “Can you fix it?”
“Not without parts I can’t afford.” His voice was empty, defeated. “She paid me half up front—sixty bucks. I told her I’d have it done today.”
“Sixty bucks?” My heart squeezed at the thought of how much that money would’ve helped us. “There must be something you can do.”
Eli shook his head. “She trusted me to fix something important, and now I’ve made it worse.”
I pressed my hands against my eyes, fighting back the tears of frustration. And then I said something I shouldn’t have.
I’d had enough of everything. I had just received my third rejection of the week from a law firm that wanted experience I couldn’t get without someone giving me a chance. I felt trapped, stuck in a loop of “can’t get a job without experience, can’t get experience without a job.” And knowing that Eli had just lost us money… it broke something inside me.
“How could you do this? I’m so tired, Eli,” I said, my voice shaking. “I’m holding everything together—the bills, the meals, your mood. We could’ve really used that sixty dollars… I can’t keep doing all of this alone.”
The words hung in the air between us, sharp and cutting.
It wasn’t cruelty. It was the grief and exhaustion that had been building up for so long. But I saw the hurt in Eli’s eyes.
“I know,” he said quietly, voice full of regret. “That’s why I tried to fix it, that’s why…”
But he didn’t finish. Instead, he stood up, walked out, and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone with the broken computer and the pile of job listings I’d crossed out in frustration.
I spent the evening crying, feeling like I had just destroyed the one good thing in my life.
Eli came home late that night. I pretended to be asleep, but I heard him stop by the bed and gently pull the blanket over my shoulders. Then he went back to the living room and slept on the couch.
The next few days were quiet. We moved around each other carefully, like dancers out of sync. He took on more handyman jobs, coming home later each night. I took on another cleaning client and applied for jobs that were beneath my qualifications but would still help.
We were both exhausted, pretending we weren’t hurting.
Then, one Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Hernandez from downstairs called me while I was cleaning a bathroom at work.
“Eli collapsed,” she said without warning. “I found him outside my apartment. He’s at urgent care now.”
I dropped my cleaning supplies and ran, not even telling my boss I was leaving.
At the clinic, I found Eli sitting on an exam table, looking pale and embarrassed, an IV in his arm.
“I’m fine,” he said quickly when he saw me. “Just got dizzy for a minute.”
The doctor told a different story: stress, low blood sugar, and exhaustion.
“When was the last time you ate a proper meal?” the doctor asked.
Eli turned his face away, not answering.
“He can’t eat when he’s stressed,” I murmured. “It just comes right back up.”
We couldn’t afford another bill, so they gave him fluids and sent us on our way. I handed them my last $20 with a shaky smile.
At home, I helped Eli to bed, even though he insisted he was fine.
“You scared me,” I said, sitting beside him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice small, eyes on the ceiling. “For everything.”
I took his hand. “I’m sorry too. For what I said the other night.”
“You weren’t wrong,” he replied softly.
“I wasn’t right, either,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “We’re a team, Eli. I forgot that for a minute.”
Finally, he looked at me, his eyes tired but clearer. “I’m not good at being part of this team sometimes.”
“Neither am I.”
That night, I made soup with what we had left in the pantry. He ate every spoonful, and for the first time in weeks, we felt like we were starting to rebuild.
I widened my job search the next day, applying to anything that involved deadlines and paperwork, even if it wasn’t exactly in my field. I applied for a remote admin position that wasn’t law, but it was something I could do.
A week later, after a long day of interviews and rejection emails, I came home to find a note on the table.
“Fire escape. Now.”
I smiled despite my exhaustion.
I found Eli on the landing outside our bedroom window, a simple picnic laid out: two sandwiches, a blanket, and some wildflowers in a coffee mug.
“They were growing onto the sidewalk, so it’s not technically theft,” he grinned.
I sat down beside him, accepting the sandwich he handed me. “Thank you.”
We ate in quiet comfort, watching the sunset as the city turned shades of orange and pink. For the first time in a long while, the knot in my chest started to loosen.
“I applied for a job last week,” I told him. “Not a paralegal one. An admin job. Remote work.”
Eli looked at me. “Yeah? How do you feel about that?”
“Like a sellout,” I said. “Like I’m giving up on what I studied for.”
He shook his head. “You do more admin work running this apartment than most people do running offices.”
I laughed, the simple truth making me feel lighter. “Maybe you’re right.”
He squeezed my hand. “We’ll be okay, babe. Somehow.”
And somehow, for the first time in a long time, I believed him.
The email came on a Tuesday morning. “We are pleased to offer you the position of Administrative Coordinator…”
I read it three times before the words sank in. A real job. With benefits. Remote work. A salary that, while not great, was more than we’d ever had.
Two weeks later, my first paycheck arrived.
We went grocery shopping—not just for rice and beans, but for vegetables, meat, and spices.
Standing in the checkout line, I flinched at the total. But this time, I could pay it.
In the car, Eli looked at the bags in the backseat and suddenly started crying. I took his hand, my own eyes filling with tears.
“We can eat real food,” he said, his voice thick.
“And next month,” I said, “we’re getting you back into trade school. To finish what you started.”
He looked at me, shocked. “Dani, we can’t afford—”
“We can now. Or we will,” I said. “I did the math.”
I drove us home, both of us glancing back at the grocery bags like they might disappear.
That night, we took down the solar lights and put up real lamps. The apartment didn’t feel like a bunker anymore. It felt like a home.
Six weeks later, we sat down for dinner—bread, roasted vegetables, and seasoned meat.
I watched Eli eat, feeling a wave of emotion. He had already started putting on weight, his face fuller and his energy returning. I even caught him snacking last weekend—something that would’ve been impossible just a few months ago.
“I used to count every grain of rice,” I said, my voice thick. “And now… it’s good to see you eating and enjoying it.”
Eli reached across the table and took my hand.
We weren’t rich. We weren’t stable. Not yet. But we were here. And we were full.