Escaping Poverty

Since I was 12 I have worried about money. I started working as a paper girl, then when I was 14 I joined the Career Based Intervention Program. A program which changed my life forever, and not in the ways it told me it would. This program was for those of lower class and intelligence. Looking bad it was wild to me, because I could see it for what it was and just went along.

I worked as a janitor, kitchen cafeteria worker, bird cage cleaner, day care assistant, game attendant at my local rec center, Wendys, and babysitting. I had worked all these jobs by the time I was 17. I was a truancy issue because I would be so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. 

At the same time my home life was changing drastically. We moved every year until I was 16, and each place got worse and worse. When I was 13 I experienced my first portion of living without electricity or hot water. I knew how to time a cold shower perfectly, how to brace myself for the cold water, that instant rush. I can still buy some VO5 Strawberries and Cream and the smell will take me back to that bathroom. By 14 I was drinking, smoking weed, and cutting on the regular. I hated school cause I was made fun of for being stinky. I had spent the night at a girls house, and she went on to bring my clothes to school to make fun of how bad they smelled.

When I was 16 I was told I should go to the Vocational School. At the time I was already well known with the school system because of my truancy and my bad attitude. I was told that I didn't have a change at anything if I stayed in the school I wasat. The problem was that I wanted to, because I wanted to make more of my life, but it was hard to voice this because back at home I was dealing with much worse things.

So I joined it and for cosmetology. I had always presented as a tom boy but I really wanted to learn to be girly. I wanted to know how girls made their hair pretty and did their makeup. The only makeup I had had been left in a bag in the trailer we lived in, and it wasn't the greatest. This program was hard to get into, but I worked hard and actually got accepted and was so excited.

Until the first day of school when I was told I would need $200 to pay for the class. Of course my mom didn't have it, every dime we had went to drugs and anything they wanted. I remember crying so hard as I changed my class to the cheapest oneavailbe... Interactive Media. And this class changed my life, it's what introcuded me to computers and a whole other world. It allowed me to pretend to be something I wasn't..... A normal kid. I didn't have to talk about the trailer, the fact that I was now bathing in the river, the fact that if we wanted to flush the toilet we had to bring the water up from the river. Toilet paper was a luxury at this point in my life, and I knew how to burn a fire in a wood burning stove, since this was house the trailer was heated. As I sit here I can still smell it, I can remember how it felt to be so cold that I would just breath under my blanket. But online I didn't have to be that person, I could just be a normal girl with a normal life.

It's where I got my education, learned how to make friends, and learned that I was more than what I had been told. 

So now I'm reaching out for help to give my own daughter more, to be able to maybe talk about my experiences and what it has been like living in this form of poverty for so long. 

I'm sorry this isn't more eloquent, I've never really been good at this. But I want to share what this life is like.... And also use some of this money to help those I know who are in the same position as me. Who have never known what it is like to breath.