Help Me Recover From My Past

Hi. My name is Amanda. I'm 28. I have made some pretty poor decisions in my life and they are following me around to this day. When I was 16, I got pregnant, and then married. When my baby girl was 2 months old, she passed away from RSV. My husband was in the Army and deployed for most of our first year of marriage. He got to come home to meet our little girl, then he was redeployed when she passed. Once he came home, neither of us were the same. We tried hard and gave it a good go. We had another daughter 5 years later. But our relationship was already on shaky ground. Shortly after our daughter's second birthday, we divorced. By this time we had jointly racked up quite a bit of credit card debt and I didn't have money to hire a lawyer, so I agreed to take whatever debt he wanted to saddle me with as long as we got joint custody. I got joint custody and some pretty nice debt. I work part time in retail. I've tried to get more hours, but because my availability isn't completely open (due to the desire to spend time with my daughter), I can't get it. I've been trying to pay things off, but I just keep drowning. I feel like I can't provide for my daughter as well as I should because a lot of my extra money goes to debt. I've called debt consolidation companies, and their monthly payments would cost me more than I'm paying now and I can barely afford what I'm currently paying. I've looked into loans, and they come with the same problem. So, I'm turning to this. I don't know if I will ge