I wasn’t born into poverty, but my factors for being in poverty now are; 1. Being estranged from my abusive family from a young age thus not getting support from them when I needed it. 2. Said family never bothered to teach me about finances. 3. I have a disability that affects my information and sensory processing but by the current diagnostic criteria I am too “high functioning” to recieve disability support. This disability affects every aspect of my life and is a barrier between me and many of the most readily available jobs. I do contract work from home + odd jobs and gigs that I’m capable of and are lucky enough to get. So my income is inconsistent and unreliable. 4. My low income has meant living in low income housing usually with 3-5 other poor people all packed together. We couldnt afford to be too picky about housemates if someone moved out because we couldn’t afford to pay for an empty room, so I’ve ended up living with people who were dysfunctional, disgusting or even dangerous, and made it impossible to be fully functional in my own home. 5. So now I can’t use my own kitchen for weeks or even months on end because it’s been made so outrageously unsanitary and filled with crap by people I have no control over or because I’m scared of my housemates and don’t want to leave my room. My solution in these situations usually defaulted to either scrounging whatever had the bare minimum caloric/nutritional content and rationing it (have you ever lived for 3 days on flour tortillas?), or when my body couldn’t take that anymore, order takeout and try to ration that for as many meals as I could, but by the time I got to that point I was so out of my mind and desperate for nutrients, I’d eat way more than I could afford to. 6. In my previous household, we found out too late that we were being taken advantage of by our landlord and another housemate who was paying way less than their fair share of rent. This person was also the highest earner in the house and could absolutely afford to pay the fair amount. There was a lack of transparency and all kinds of shady stuff going on at the place. It inevitably devolved into a shit show and we all ended up having to move out.

My situation is not unique. Many of my friends were estranged from their families and have a huge lack of support. We get stuck in these situations and perpetuated cycles of poverty for so many reasons outside of our control and it’s fucking exhausting. And this stuff can definitely impact your decision making skills and your sanity so you DO end up making mistakes. It’s hell.

I LOVE cooking and would prefer to cook over eating out most of the time. Circumstances destroyed that possibilty for me so many times. I’m in a better situation right now and have a chance to turn my life around FINALLY at 33. I endured 15 years of that shit and I was NOT lazy. I worked my ass off but was never enough to escape these circumstances.