Poverty

Poverty.
I watched a women at the store, she was telling a friend, ” Man I am broke, as she filled her cart with odds and ends. I saw her chose some make-up out of the display case, and set about picking out a piece of jewelry and left chatting with her friend as I stood. I am sure she did not notice me, most people don’t, or if they do, because I am white they do not see that I live in poverty. I was there to buy some toilet paper, and hopefully had enough change to buy some dish soup. But we haven’t paid the light bill yet, and the telephone bill is due soon. I have to awaken every morning feeling panic rise in my throat wondering if my next pay check will be enough to pay a bill. I have to ask the women I work for, for a check every week. She has memory loss and forgets a lot of things, she gets really upset if the hours are over 14 hours a week, she can’t help it she doesn’t remember that she has enough money to pay me for the rest of her life and still leave her children a inheritance that is more money then I have made in my life. So I keep my hours as low as I can so not to upset her too much. I am glad that the telephone company was nice to me, said I could pay my bill late, aren’t you?
I have worked all my life and at times I was able to pay all my bills and felt wealthy. But it is different today. You see I became disabled, a mental illness they say due to the damage my ex- husband did in his anger and rage. When we divorced he got the home and the money and most of the household things. The lawyers said because I abandoned it (the home), so now it belongs to him. I abandoned it to go to the women shelter. He was trying to kill me, it was a year before the kids and I could even get our clothes and the few things I stole back in the night, when he was at work. But that is another story. Since then I have lived in poverty. But I am better off then many. I have been able to go back to school and am going to get a degree. I want to work with other women, like me forced into a life of defeat.

Someday I won’t be called disabled anymore. My husband tries so hard to work, but he physically is fighting to even walk some days. We applied for disability for him, but I hear that it sometimes takes a year and they always deny applications 3 times, and we will have to go to court eventually to tell a judge what is wrong with him and why he struggles every day to just do the little work he can do. I hear they put you through hell, before the government will approve and agree that you are disabled. Until then, we will just survive like we always do. The lady at the social security office was so nice to me, she said that my husband had made enough that ” if ” he qualifies he could get 700. Dollars a month. Don’t you think that was nice of her to tell me.
Choking down the panic every morning with the cup of coffee I drink. I am waiting to hear if we can get fuel assistances. The lady on the phone yelled at me , when I told her my husband I tried to work , its called self employment so instead of the 3 months income I had submitted she made me go back and list all the income he had made in a year. I tried to tell her I did not know how to figure out what were deductions and what was not. I was going to take it to H&R block and have the tax guy do it. I am not an accounted. She yelled at me again and said just look at the form, fill it out and sign it. It says I can get it for fraud if I do it wrong, but I did it anyway, I hope I did it right. I felt like she was calling me a liar and a thief. (My husband had made 6,000. Dollars this last year, I know it wasn’t much but he was pretty proud.) I know I was honest and did what the form said. Now she will not call me back. He hasn’t worked in the last three months, but that doesn’t matter. I applied for emergency assistance like the application said we could, that was a month an half ago. The gas company finally brought fuel out to us, because we were down to one percent. So we owe them 500 dollars. If it had not been for their kindness we would not have had heat this last month. Last year our heat bill was 3,000 dollars when we lived in that old farm house. They helped us then we got 800 dollars. It took us until June to pay off the remaining balance and the gas company was angry with us. I guess I should feel grateful, but it is kind of hard to be nice when people treat you like the scum of the earth. The people that are suppose to be helping you. I am so glad the women at the new gas company were so kind to us, aren’t you?
A while back I got a call from my mom, she said my cousin Brian had called her and was trying to reach me. Some man had called him, and told him that I was in serious trouble and they were going to charge me with a crime and take my drivers license. I have not committed any crimes but I called the number back and ask him what it was. He said I owed them 500 dollars and that if I did not pay they were going to charge me with fraud. I told him I could not pay and told him he could not call my cousin like that and tell him I was a criminal. (I am too embarrassed to call my cousin back to tell him I had not committed a crime.) He laughed at me and said he could do anything he wanted to and I could not stop him. I hung up the phone; he was calling me names and said that he knew why I was something or another. I looked up consumer protection law and it said I could not be treated like that, and they are not to call family members and say what he said. So I called him back, and he would not take my call, I left a message, and told them that what he had done was illegal. The next day I got a call from the same company and the man on the phone was really nice to me and said I could pay the bill a little at a time. I thanked him for being so nice to me, don’t you think that was nice of him.,
I have not bought my medicine for my asthma. I can’t afford it. The Advair alone is 500. And I have insurance through Medicare, but when I tried to use it they said I owed 127 dollars for my compuvent. I said but I have insurance they take 40 dollars out of my disability every month. The lady at the counter said you only get a discount. I left the medicine there and came home. I have a friend who has extra and she gives it to me when she can. That is how I get my Seroquel too. That is the medicine I take for my mental illness. It keeps me stable so I don’t have to go to the hospital. I hate it there; most times they treat you like shit. One time I had to go in to the emergency room, I had dislocated my shoulder. The Doctor looked at me, and seen my mental illness on the chart and said I was fine and sent me home. I went to my family Doctor the next day, and he put my shoulder back in place. Man you should have heard him chewing out the emergency room for what they done to me. I was able to walk out with my head held high that day, not feeling like I was some sort of low life, that didn’t deserve medical treatment like I had the night before. It wasn’t the first time; I was use to being treated like that, when I had to go to the emergency room. It was almost automatically that the minute I walked in the door the doc would call the physic doctor and send me upstairs. Most times I was not treated for what the illness was that I had come in the door for. I am glad we moved, because I have had to go to the emergency room with my asthma twice, in our old house there was mold in the basement and I got really sick from it. But the doctors in this town didn’t have mental illness on my chart I didn’t tell em, and they treated me for my asthma and were really nice to me. I won’t give the new clinic my old records I just keep telling em I forgot to send for them. It nice that my doctor defended me to that doctor at the emergency room., don’t you think.
We moved now, out of that old farm house, to a smaller home, a trailer actually, our rent is now only 450 dollars. Our car insurances are 100 dollars a month and our phone bill 98. I don’t by many grocers, my sister in law let us garden with her and I canned and froze a bunch of vegetables. My husband helped a neighbor man feed calves and we worked off a beef, so we have meat.
I awoke this morning excited because today I could go to the food shelf and I really like the food shelf I go to, they give us many basic foods and a few things such as a cake mix or a box of cookies. I hated the other food shelf in the town we lived. You went in and they yelled out your name when your order was ready. If you were really lucky you would get a single package of hamburger with your order, a package of hotdogs, and a ton of vegetable soup. It made me feel so small and inhuman. I am so grateful for the food shelf in the new town. I am glad the food shelf people are so kind to me. Don’t you agree?
I remember going to the county office a month ago, our son had committed another crime, He had thrown our kitchen table at me, and the prosecuting attorney told the judge that initially they thought it was just that our son fought with us, but they realized that he was hurting other people. He had beaten up an emergency medical technician that had come to our home. And he was sent to a long term treatment facility. A year before we had called 10 professionals asking for help with him, but they all said we had to charge him with a crime before they could help him.
Now the county wants us to pay for the long term treatment, so. We had to give the women our income statements and titles to our truck and go through a hundred questions, and she kept looking at me as If I were lying to her. I handed her my husbands receipts and she said “well I thought you could at least have had it in order I can’t accept this the way it is. ” I just stood their looking at her and waited with a smile on my face. She huffed at me and said I am going to my supervisor. I did not say a word. 20 minutes later she came back and said “Fine this will work, and she left again. She didn’t hand me back the title and when I ask her she said she did not have them. I went home without them. Then called in, again they said they did not have them. My husband went to the court house and asked for them and the lady said she mailed them to us. I guess rule 25 is going to pay for our son’s treatment. But we still have to go to court and they will assign child support. Our son had a little money in savings and they took it all. And they are supposed to give him some personal needs money but they don’t, so he can’t buy shampoo and stuff that he needs there. No one will tell us where his money went. He belongs to the state now I guess. It was sure nice of the judge to agree that he needed help and not send him to a prison, don’t you agree.
Christmas came and went for us. I got a scrub brush and 2 20 dollar gas cards. I was so grateful I filled up the gas tank I can make it to work all week. I really do not mind being broke. As long as we get to stay warm at night, and I can fix meals every day. A while back on the way to the food shelf I saw a homeless man standing with a sign. I stopped and said I only have a few dollars in quarters but you can have it. He said god – bless and I thought I am, I have abed I can sleep in tonight, and my grandchildren are coming to stay a couple days, I cried cause I wondered if he had any kids or grandkids and did he ever get to see his mom or dad. I am glad the food shelf people are so kind to me. Don’t you agree?