(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Can someone who's never been poor ever truly understand the scars that poverty creates? [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-03 History professor, author, and self-described “reformed politician” Dr. L. Madeline “Mad” Hildebrandt asked a simple question of her followers on Thursday. x If someone has never been poor, what is something they wouldn’t understand? — Dr Mad (@Mad_Hildebrandt) February 2, 2023 While I didn’t reply (I rarely tweet, I usually just read), answers flew to my mind faster than I wanted them to. x That list is LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG https://t.co/Pp11x9yifp — KateSamuels.✡️ 🎨🖌 (@witty_shitty) February 3, 2023 I remembered how a years-long friendship with the daughter of a wealthy Missouri lobbyist was forever changed in my early 30s when I griped about a bad day at the restaurant job I had to take after grad school because entry-level work in my field paid even less. “Why don’t you get your parents to pay your rent?” she asked as we sipped margaritas in the very nice West Hollywood apartment her dad paid for. She knew I was a foster kid with no parents to speak of, but still, she said it. Perhaps in that moment she thought I was just waitressing at a shitty chain restaurant to prove something she didn’t care to prove, trying on poverty out of principle … or something. Based on things that happened after this moment, though? She was just spoiled and insensitive. But that’s another story entirely. RELATED: Here we go again, being asked to pity the people struggling along on $400,000 a year I don’t think Dr. Hildebrandt—whose Twitter feed is a pile of questions seeking engagement that rarely succeed—was prepared for the volume of replies she received, as indicated by this reply to herself she sent 14 hours after her initial tweet. x Dear, loving people, there are no words to respond to each of you.💔 — Dr Mad (@Mad_Hildebrandt) February 2, 2023 Regrettably, I found myself in a strange comparison vortex, centering my own experiences as I scrolled, waiting for my dogs to finish their morning scamper. Of course, there is no such thing as the suffering Olympics, but it’s still what I did. RELATED: No way to live: No place to call home Respondents ran the gamut, and it was striking to see how many folks who “made good” chimed in. Like this NPR host ... x The stigma attached to something you cannot do anything about. — Susan Giles Wantuck (@SGWantuck) February 3, 2023 … or this filmmaker. x How much more expensive it is to be poor. — Luke A. Renner | WhatLiesInsideFilm.com (@firesideint) February 3, 2023 An Oscar-nominated composer weighed in … x Appreciating the food you have. — Shawn Patterson (@shawnmpatterson) February 3, 2023 … as did the screenwriter of the ‘90s hit Young Guns (and Young Guns II). x How good apple butter is on white bread when you toast it on a motel room wall heater. — John Fusco (@JohnFusco12) February 2, 2023 I hate apple butter, but as a former “motel kid” myself, I certainly can relate. I grew up in a college town on the edge of Cuyahoga County—just close enough to both the Cleveland airport and I-80 to support three neighboring towns’ crummy motel districts. We lived in one such motel room for over three years; some time later, we’d run through the three towns’ clusters in a cycle punctuated by couch surfing and brief leases always ended by eviction. Some rooms, like the one we lived in for three years, had small “dorm” fridges, or even full kitchenettes, but most did not. And so by the time I was 12, I’d learned the value of winter weather and motel ice machines when needing to keep food cold, and to cook with whatever you could find. Long before panini presses had their heyday as the must-have small kitchen appliance, I was reheating sandwiches with standard-issue motel room irons meant for clothing. RELATED STORY: The happiest place on earth is a nightmare for thousands struggling to make a living In August 2022, “professional shitposter” Alex Cohen broke the internet with a satirical tweet about cooking chicken in a hotel coffee pot—a tweet that too many people took seriously. x This is my best LinkedIn post to date pic.twitter.com/lfyGEGHuo8 — Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) September 1, 2022 While Twitter did what Twitter does, my brain went to the ways we’d use coffeemakers’ water heater and hotplate when living in motel rooms that provided them (most didn’t). Back to Dr. Hildebrandt’s replies. Marketer Mike Whelan offered two great points—via a reply and a quote-tweet (QT)—about what he calls “decision fatigue.” x My wife used to say her only dream for our money was that she’d be able to pay all the month’s bills in one sitting. No scheming and plotting what has to be put off and who charges the highest fees, just paying the bills. So much decision fatigue when you’re broke. — Mike Whelan (@mikewhelanjr) February 3, 2023 “Decision fatigue” is such a great way to describe it. The house of cards that poverty builds for so many leads to choices so many people have never had to make. Poverty is pretty far back in my rearview, but it doesn’t take much to bring it back in front of me, including the pang of embarrassment and adrenaline when a transaction is declined on a credit card (usually due to overzealous fraud protection, which I do appreciate). Whelan shares one of those such moments: x Important thread. Today my card was declined at a restaurant. It’s bc their internet was down but in our early years we’d nervously scan groceries worried we’d have to put stuff back or ask them to “hold it for us.” So exhausting. Poverty is decision fatigue. https://t.co/rWFNSGZD0g — Mike Whelan (@mikewhelanjr) February 3, 2023 Poverty, or even just the brink of it, is definitely a balancing act. Not just “decision fatigue” and prioritizing which things to buy or pay for, but often calculating one’s assets down to the penny. I spent the bulk of my adult teen years and 20s working in bars and restaurants, and since a trusted adult had abused my Social Security number to the point that I was on Chexsystems and had bottom-barrel credit, I lived a cash existence—at first because I had to, which became out of habit, and then out of ignorance. So I had a little lockbox of cash in my bedroom, hidden in a place where I hoped my roommates would never look, since I trusted nobody. I kept meticulous notes about my earnings and what I’d need to hit key deadlines—rent being the most important and least malleable. The hope would always be that I’d have enough rent long before my final shift before the first, but it rarely happened. Though it happened in the middle of the month, the Great Blackout of August 2003 almost ruined me. The power went out just before my biggest earning day of the week—College ID Night Thursday!—at a busy college bar on Cleveland’s Eastside, and it wasn’t back on in time for the almost as lucrative Friday. Just like that, I’d lost hundreds of dollars I deeply needed. But, as a wise person once said from a conference stage, people don’t run out of resources, they run out of relationships. So I was able to borrow what I needed from a friend, and my rent was on time. But before I swallowed my shame and asked for help? I was worried about eating, and about being evicted. Within weeks, I’d decided to leave service work and began pursuing a salaried position, which led to me going back to college, which led to grad school, which ultimately led me here. Being poor does make you always try to see the sunny side of merely surviving, of course. It’s the only way to combat the unavoidable and seemingly permanent cloud of anxiety, as writer Jamie B notes. x The fear that weights on you even as a child when living in poverty and it never goes away even if by some miracle you manage to find a way out . — Jamie B (@jambie61) February 3, 2023 The fear is so real. In addition to toilet paper, I also hoard other essentials from the paper products and cleaning aisles. And food. If a staple like flour or pasta is on sale, I’ll stock up even if it’s not on my shopping list. I moved last month and a dear, but fairly new, friend helping me organize my new kitchen lamented its lack of a pantry. “Where am I supposed to put 11 boxes of fusilli?” she whined. I told her to put them in the coat closet; there are no words for the bulge her eyes made. After hoards of everything from my favorite teas to coarse-ground black pepper led her on trip after trip to the foyer, she finally asked what was up. “You know how I grew up poor? This is how I deal with it now that I’m not, because I might be again one day.” She nodded without judgment, and I made a joke about how my new lack of a pantry might finally cure me of a quarter-century-plus of food-hoarding. It made us both laugh uncomfortably. A couple days later, though, she was back … and she had an idea. I recently learned I need to install new electrical panels, and they won't fit in the current low-profile wall cabinet near the kitchen that houses such things. It’s going to be a whole-ass project to build a new cabinet that will accommodate them. “What if, when you tackle that project, you make the new cabinet floor-to-ceiling? That way you’ll have a place for your food hoard and your coats.” It was a genius idea, and one that acknowledged the reality of my bad joke: It won’t be easy to un-do a lifetime’s fear of going hungry, or I’d have done it by now. I felt so seen: Instead of being annoyed, like a certain daughter of a Missouri lobbyist who I used to know, or mocking me, or so many other choices she could of made, my new friend found a way to accommodate my scar tissue. I was baffled by her understanding. Then I remembered: My new friend grew up poor, too. Of course she got it. Of course she didn’t judge. x empathy towards those who struggle or are still figuring out how to meet ther basic needs. its a different fight when it comes to self worth and self confidence, especially in america where identity is so tied in with income https://t.co/s9BQqBjkKI — Bilad Al Sudan (@sudi_) February 3, 2023 The story of poverty is not just mine; I’m far from the only one who escaped it but still bears the scars. RELATED: Finding joy amid the trauma of that Christmas I spent at a homeless shelter But by escaping it—through education, which ultimately led to a firmly middle-class career—I’m an alumnus of a group that still grows every day: Those still enduring poverty. Whether unable to work or only able to secure jobs that never pay enough, millions of Americans suffer this too-common condition, and millions more are on the brink. RELATED: White House takes action to tackle rising rents, abusive rental market practices And even the ways we measure poverty, in largely unsuccessful attempts to counter it, are “fundamentally flawed.” There are too many replies to Dr. Hildebrandt’s tweet to include them all here, but please do go check them out. Whether you’ve never been poor or you have, whether you still are poor or fear you may be soon, there’s a lesson there for everyone in what became a confessional of those who have found themselves struggling. It is by listening to those most affected by a circumstance that we best find empathy, and the determination to create a path toward changing it. RELATED: Congress failed to renew child tax credits. Now, we need these 15 states to lead the way [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/3/2150858/-Can-someone-who-s-never-been-poor-ever-truly-understand-the-scars-that-poverty-creates Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/