I am sick and tired. I got a mac os x at 10.6.3 snow leopard. I now have it at a 10.6.8 and I am unable to download it further. I bought Lion and never got it. I had to download everything off the internet ALSO. what do I do? I'm about to trash it.

There are no updates for 10.6.8. That's as high as it goes.

Apple sells 10.7.5 for $20 and sends you a redemption code via email to use with the App Store app to download it.

As QuickTimeKirk said, Apple sends you an email with a 10.7 Lion redemption code that you plug into the App Store application to redeem, and then you can download Lion. Once you give the App Store the redemption code you will be able to re-download Lion as many times as you like via the App Store -> Purchases tab.

If your Mac meets the system requirements, you can upgrade to El Capitan for free

<Upgrade to OS X El Capitan - Apple Support>

But you do need to keep in mind that any older PowerPC based apps will no longer run. And some other apps may not be compatible with El Capitan, so you should maybe demo El Capitan on an external disk, or repartition your boot disk to give you a 30-50GB partition for testing El Capitan (BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP before attempting anything like this).

Update: I also suggest you download El Capitan at least once so that it will then be in your App Store -> Purchases tab after Apple removes El Capitan for new downloads (as it has done for Mavericks and Yosemite). You can "Quit" the El Capitan installer once the download is complete, so you do not have to actually install it at this time.