Many folks have posted some diaries about being poor, so I thought I'd ad my 2 cents. You see, I grew up dirt poor. Not being able to pay the bills, utilities shut off, nearly homeless, all that. But when you add a disabled child into the mix of chaos, the shit really hits the fan.
For maybe a small window in my life I had relative stability. We moved in with my dad after he and my mom had separated and he had a pretty good job working on speed boats. He had to quit that after a while because health problems began wearing him down. Alcoholism, Hepatitis C and Cirrhosis can really break a person down after a while.
After losing that job he just did odd jobs for friends to get by. Eventually he decided to uproot us and go to the middle of nowhere in Tennessee to work with a friend at a lumber company to scrape by but that fell through too. So us kids went back to live with our mom and he passed on soon after that.
My being developmentally disabled didn't help matters either, especially where school was concerned. When you have parents who don't want to admit a child needs help, even when the writing is on the wall, there's bound to be trouble. I struggled throughout school and my parents couldn't help because either they were working or partying. Not to mention Florida isn't exactly a paragon when it comes to disabled students in grade school.
And of course, my mom, being as clueless as she was would ask me why I couldn't be normal like the other kids. Of course in my town normal was bragging to one's friends about all the keg parties they'd gone to and how wasted they got or talking about alcoholic drink mixes during driver's ed class. The rat lines going in and out of schools would shock people if they actually looked into it. The teacher asked who in the class had never had a drink and, yep...I was the only one. After all I'd seen, why would I?
And after graduation I just drifted from shit job to shit job not knowing what I was doing until I finally started college 9 years ago. By the time 2012 rolled around I'd finished 2 degree programs and got married. I don't know how the hell I made it this far but all I can say is that I was incredibly lucky. Of course I still have to deal with the frustration of a shit job market with employers who won't even give the slightest consideration, but I guess it could be worse.
Let me put it this way: Being poor sucks badly enough, especially with all the judgmental assholes in regards to programs that help the poor, but being disabled AND poor is worse. You don't have any clue how you're going to get the help you need and you live in a place where people are becoming increasingly selfish and downright ignorant and stupid. Every day is a struggle and the stress never ends.
To those people who would so readily kick us while we're down I say this: Your boss could just as easily decide he doesn't need you anymore because he's decided to send your job to a place where human rights and worker protections are nonexistent because that's what you voted for. And I hope that when that happens I sure hope society is kinder to you than you've been to us, because even you don't deserve the kind of treatment we've received.
See you around,
Homer