I’m sitting in a sunny room at the beach in Hawaii, eating cucumbers and watching the waves. They’re not the greatest, but they’re not that bad. They are, however, very colorful and very refreshing. I’m sitting in my favorite spot, the sand, as I think about my life and the things that happened in it.
I was born into a family that was fairly prosperous, but my parents had to take in extra money to take care of me. Being poor was not something I thought I would encounter my whole life. I don’t think my parents were ever aware of it, but it was a part of their lives.
Well, now that you mention it, I have some very strange things in my childhood. I have two older brothers and a younger sister, so it never really hit me that I would one day be poor. I always had a job, so I never really saw myself as poor. I think it was just an accident of birth.
Well, I think being poor is an accident of birth too. I think being poor is something that happens to a lot of people. Most people have some sort of economic hardship, and when they become poor, they tend to be poor not because they want to, but because they get used to it.
I was talking to an old friend of mine yesterday who told me about what it was like to be poor as a kid. She had been on welfare for years before coming to this country, living in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere. She’s telling me that, even as a kid, she and her sisters had to be very careful.
I’ve been in situations where I had to be extremely careful about where I lived, especially considering what I was up against. At the age of 15 I moved from a crappy apartment to a trailer park, and I’ve only come out of this situation because I got a job.
The trailer park was in a shitty part of town. The streets were filled with abandoned cars, garbage, and dog poop. There were no sidewalks, and the whole place smelled like the garbage people were throwing up. I never knew where I was.
The trailer park I was living in was not all that far away. It was basically in the middle of nowhere. The closest thing to a mall was the parking lot of a convenience store. I was living with my parents and they were completely unsupportive of my decision to move. My mom was just as unsupportive as my dad.
I had the house to myself. I had my room. My dog, Jasper, was sleeping next to me. I would sit and read for hours. I would watch documentaries. I would take long walks. I would talk to my dog. I would run to the store for a snack. I would get in a car and go to a movie theater. I would go to bed at a decent hour. You know, normal stuff.
Not long after I moved in, I started getting the occasional text from a few of my friends asking me if I was alright. These texts were so normal, you could almost imagine they came from real friends. They were like they were all just talking about some things that had been bothering them. Even if they were just saying this is how it went down, I could feel their concern and concern for me.
