So hard to help yourself...

I don't think I've ever been in a more difficult spot in any point in my life. There has been so much that has happened over the past few months, that I'm not even sure how I've made it this far along.

A quick recap...
The ex and I split. He moved one way, I moved another. We remained civil, we had the kids 50/50 and it worked out well for a bit. Until his alcoholism kicked back into full swing. I had to keep the kids from seeing him, as it was an unsafe environment, and they know that he is not healthy enough to take care of himself, therefore unable to take care of them. Some crazy stuff went down after that, (read here and here) and now he's about 3 hours away in rehab. I've gone from having my kids half time to having them full time, which changes a lot of things financially.

Fast forward to the current. I've been doing all I can to make things right. I've applied for Family Health Plus insurance through the state for the kids and myself, which was nothing but a hassle. I had to get forms from the old insurance company, petition for child support and a bunch of other crap just to get them to process my application. I was starting to wonder if they had any more hoops that they wanted me to jump through. I also applied for food stamps, because if I could kill my grocery bill for the most part, that would take a HUGE expense out of my month and then maybe it wouldn't be so hard to keep up on other bills. So I applied for that in December, they denied me because the date that they gave me to phone interview by included a holiday and the offices were closed. I called immediately the next day, was told someone would call me back. They never did and then they denied my case because I failed to keep the interview. Righttt... I reapplied towards the end of January, once I found out I was denied, and by law they have to tell you within 30 days of their decision, or schedule your interview within that time. As of today, I still hadn't heard anything. So of course, I called. I spent about 10 minutes on the phone with them today crying. The woman on the phone told me that NONE of the applications during whatever time frame got processed because the person in charge of them isn't anymore. So I do my part, correctly, and still get screwed?? Nice. I love the state. Now I'm missing pay stubs that they need for my file, and have to jump through some more hoops in order to again, get my interview scheduled and hopefully get some assistance.

I'm not quite sure why its gotta be so difficult? Is this their way of weeding people out who might not actually need the help as much as others? Because the people who really need it WILL jump through the hoops?

I'm just sitting here shaking my damn head, confused, befuddled...