I am going to write about a post this morning. A post about fat poor women. Such vile and ignorant comments followed. I posted a reply about how hard it is to be poor and fresh fruits and vegetables are too expensive for ME and I am not 'poor' like the people mentioned in the comments and the post.
I wish I were more like my sister. She seems to be able to stay cool and calm and responds clearly and concisely. She doesn't seem to let the comments get her flustered. I can't. I get myself so worked up and upset. I keep mulling it over in my head trying to figure out why these people are so mean and judgmental.
I hear so much from so many people about how lazy poor people are. They just lay around sponging off everyone else. They have cell phones and internet and omg!! CABLE TV!! Why do you care, I think. So fucking what. Why is it your business.
So then I try to explain it to them. What it's like to be poor. Oh, walking is FREE! Get off your lazy ass and walk. Stop buying candy bars with your food stamps and then buying beer and cigarettes. Of course... EVERYONE on assistance is doing just that. I didn't do that. I guess I take it personally. I have been on food stamps. Oh... but you are different. How... How am I different!! You know that most people on food stamps are white and have a job. Instead of pissing and moaning about how lazy poor folks are, why don't you get mad at the real problem.... Walmart and other corporations that pay as little as possible and then tell their employees to go apply for food stamps. Yes, it does happen. Walmart and it's ilk are the so called welfare queens, not these people just trying to keep their heads above water.
I wish I could just let it go. I can't. And it will ruin my day thinking about the rude asshole comments these faceless internet users are saying. I don't know them. Why should I care!! But I just want to cry, as if all their rude comments are addressed to me. Well, you need to stop buying junk and buy healthy food. It's easy! I do. I can get meat for $4.99/lb and buy organic etc... and make great healthy meals. I walk. I can do it. You are just making excuses!! First of all, let me stop you right there. There is no way in hell I can afford to pay $4.99 for a pound of meat. We don't buy fucking pork chops because of how much they are. I try to buy a chicken which at Aldi is $5 or $6 and make chicken and chicken stock that I try to stretch as far as I can go. I'm lucky if I can afford the 80/20 crappy ground beef instead of the 75/25 one. I don't buy ground beef though.... I buy ground turkey because it is cheaper. I buy whatever I can try to get to stretch for as long as I can.
Well, just eat less meat. Sure. Less than I already do, you mean. When we take two pieces of chicken and stretch it for 5 people. Should I eat less than THAT!! Believe me, I do everything I can to try to eat healthier while trying to feed 3 kids and 2 adults on less than $100/biweekly. And I'm one of the lucky ones.
Oh, when I was a kid we could eat healthy and always had plenty of healthy fruits and vegetables. Sure.... When was that! I don't know if you realize, but what you could buy 'when I was a kid' is a lot more than you can buy now. I cringe at Aldi when I spend $50 on half a cart of food.
I am at home. So I can do more than most others can. A lot of these lazy people you speak of work at least one low wage job. Probably 2. Maybe even more. They don't even have insurance. Oh, sure, maybe they have 'insurance'. The kind where you have to pay thousands before the insurance company has to pay a dime. At least they now have to at least cover preventative stuff. But so what. You go to get a mammogram and find out you have cancer.... who can afford to do anything about it!!
I can't afford 'healthy' grass fed beef or organic this or gluten free that. I buy rice and beans, make my own tortillas, cake mix, hot chocolate for the kids.... I could go on. And I get razzed about all my DIY stuff from my family. I feel sometimes like a joke. But to do that I have to buy stuff upfront. When I make laundry soap it costs about $20 for the stuff. But it lasts me months. But how many have $20 to pull out of their budget for that!
I know maybe we could make better choices for where our money goes. The credit card payments don't help. But I don't use them anymore. I pay extra when I can. But it's there and that's that. We don't have cable. We have inexpensive cell phones and no landline. We have the internet (Shock) which is not a luxury but a necessity. We struggle, just like everyone else, and we are better off than a lot of other people. So when someone bemoans all those lazy poor people I get mad. I just want to cry because I was never lazy. It's hard being poor. You have to work so hard just to keep your head above water. And it isn't cheap. You can't buy in bulk so you pay a lot more for everything.
When my daughter was little and we lived at that motel, I made $300/week. Wow, that's a lot isn't it. Sounds like a lot. Until I paid $100 for the room, plus $5 so we could have our mini fridge from rent a center which we paid for weekly also. Then I paid $100 for the sitter. Who smoked in front of my kid and I had to take her to the doctor weekly because she had respiratory problems all the time. But I couldn't afford anyone else. Then I had to pay for gas.... To drive an hour to work and an hour home every day. Do you know how much money I had for food after that? NONE! My then boyfriend was working on a house for us to move into. If we didn't have that I don't know if we ever could have gotten out of that. I can tell you that fruits and vegetables and healthy food were not on the menu. I remember eating a lot of peanut butter on bread. Anything decent we had went to our daughter.
Yes, I gained weight when I was pregnant. And I couldn't seem to get rid of it after she was born. Then when we moved again back to our single wide trailer we had lived in before the motel, that was another fun time. As we paid $400/month just so we didn't freeze to death. As our propane heat seeped out of every crack every window. Thank god for heap for helping us. Thank god for community action who replaced our windows, though the new windows were just like the old ones and didn't seem to help much. We insulated, we tried everything we could to keep the heat from escaping. But it was fruitless.
I think back to that and remember how close to homeless we were. And then the fire happened and we lost everything. You realize how little stuff means in that place. That place of only having the clothes on your back and just being grateful no one got hurt. I was so happy when our dog and cats were found wet, huddled under the trailer together, but ok. And then my family came like angels and helped us. Helped us get back on our feet. We turned a terrible thing into a positive and now have our house sitting on the buried corpse of the trailer.
My husband works. He works his butt off and we pay taxes. We have more than paid back all the assistance we got. Yet I still feel that glare.... every time I hear comments about those lazy poor people. I feel it as surely as if they were talking directly to me. Every time I go to the store to buy groceries and feel that lurch in my stomach at the register, counting in my head how much I have left to get whatever I need I think of how lucky I am because so many others have it worse. They are the ones who are truly struggling, in the face of such vitriol. In the face of such unabashed anger and hatred as I see displayed by so many. They are just like me. I am just like them. And every time you malign them, you are maligning me. I hope you see my face when you do, That you are saying those things to me. I am not different. I am just like them. It is me you are calling lazy. It is me you are calling a welfare queen. It is me.
