Greetings, everybody. My name is Jane. Recently, I was able to escape from the man who kept me in prison. I was hoping my life would get better after this, but my family and I are still struggling to exist. I was 17 when it all started. We were living happily in England, we had a full family - me, my mom, my dad, and my older brother, John. Everything was just fine, and I was getting ready to go to university, but suddenly my dad started having problems with his business. He began to suffer losses, and it really affected our family. Dad became nervous and fearful. I had a feeling that things were going to fall apart, and I was right. My dad declared bankruptcy, fired all his employees, and shut down his firm. It meant that our good life had come to an end, and problems and poverty had begun. Our savings were melting before our eyes. My mom and brother immediately began to look for a job to provide for our family, at least with food, but still money was tight. We sold the car, and moved into a cheap apartment on the outskirts of town. We believed that everything would be fine because we were still a family and we could overcome all of our difficulties. All we had to do was work together, but there was a man on our team who was dragging us to the bottom. As it turned out, he was to blame for the fact that our ship crashed in the first place.
One day, my dad came home completely broken. His face was as white as a sheet of paper. He was clearly terrified. We started asking him what had happened, and he finally confessed. He said he had lost all the money we'd been saving so hard for the past few months. We realized that the problems with his business appeared for a reason.
Dad had been gambling for a long time, and one night he lost money that he didn't have. He had no choice, and to pay off his debts, he had to wind down his business. Then that night, he felt that he could get it all back. So he took the money and went to play again. But like a regular gambler, he couldn't stop in time and he lost everything. Again. It was awful. It wasn't just us who suffered because of dad's addiction. Dozens of his employees were out of work because my father just couldn't hold back from playing. He had everything, and he lost it. And I'm not just talking about his business and his money. I'm talking about his family. He lied to us. Because of him, we were in a terrible situation, and we now had no money to even pay the rent for our apartment. My father was very sorry for what he had done, and sincerely wanted to fix it. Dad said he was just messing things up, and that he'd better stay away from us. So we were alone. Now it was just my mom, my brother, and me, and we had to figure out what to do. It was clear that we'd have to live on the streets and starve to death if we didn't turn to someone for help. But the thing is, we didn't even know where to go. We had no relatives, and all of our family friends were dad's employees. After he fired them, they wouldn't want to help us. We lasted another month while my mother tried to find a job, but she was constantly turned down due to her age or lack of work experience. We could have been thrown out of the apartment at any moment. There was only one person left to help us. My mother had a cousin who lived in America. She wanted to borrow money from him so we could at least pay the rent, but he said he was having trouble with money too, and couldn't help us. But if we suddenly want to change something, and move to America, he would be happy to help us with housing. At that moment, we had an idea. Moving to the States felt like a fresh start, which was so necessary for us. We could start over and forget everything that had happened in the past. So we bought tickets with the last of our money, and flew to New York.
My mother's cousin was glad to have us at his home. But the thing is, he had a wife, and they lived life to the fullest. Naturally, his wife didn't want his three distant relatives, who she didn't even know, living with them. So we knew we had to find a place to live as quickly as possible. But we needed money and work. From that moment on, we spent whole days in search of ways to make money. We couldn't get a proper job because we had no papers and we were just immigrants. And I didn't even have an education. So obviously the work we could find was just terrible. John was a loader at a store, and my mother and I worked in a cafe as cleaners. It was awful. The work took all of our strength...
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