The Truth Will Not Set You Free

Yeah, I'll admit it. For all of my do-gooder, social justice, help those with less work there must have been some part of me still who sucked up that cultural belief that you probably could get out of poverty, if you really wanted to. Especially if you had education and no kids or, say, just one. 

Actually? This year I lived about $400 above the poverty level guideline for my state, which is $14,570 for a family of two. This counts the ten weeks in 2010 where I had zero income, aside from some way surprising and unexpected help from a friend. I thought I'd find a job, probably even a good job, one I liked. I have a college degree and am a barred attorney. Well let me tell you, my friends, I've tried. I've applied for everything from lawyer jobs to warehouse and manufacturing jobs. Cleaning houses, daycare, administrative, non-profit - you name it, my application has gone there.

At the beginning of this year, I started a new job. it pays $8 an hour, is 20 hours a week, and will cover perhaps 1/3 of my bills. Let me lay out my bills for you - HOA fee (nonpayment equals eviction), basic internet, car insurance and gas, heat and cooking gas, daycare, cell phone (only phone I have) and thrift store clothes for Z, cheap dog food, diapers... the things not covered by the food stamps we already get. My mom is so poor I'm using part of my food stamps to feed her, too, which could mean I lose them if I got reported.

In order to qualify for welfare, I have to sit in a room for 20 hours a week in order to be considered "working" the required 40 hours per week to get welfare in MD. The majority of the $432 a month a family of two gets in welfare would go to pay for the additional daycare hours sitting in that room would require. Could I get a daycare voucher? Sure! However, my part-time job runs until 7pm and Z is an "infant" for daycare purposes and those kinds of openings are incredibly hard to find - I've spoken to over 60 at this point. The couple I have found have filled before his other parent got over to look at them, which is a requirement of our custody agreement. I can't just find one and put him in it without risking a violation of that. He's in a home daycare now, in 60 days I may have a voucher if they clear the background check. However, if I can help it he won't be there that long because they smoke. They say only outside, and I don't think they do when he's there but the house stinks and the residue is everywhere and a health risk. But, that was the first mutually-agreed upon place and finding it delayed me working until 6 weeks after I was offered the job. I had to start earning something so he had to go there.

Meanwhile, my dad's house is being foreclosed and is frankly... probably should be condemned. He is supposed to pay the property taxes on my mom's house, but he hasn't for the last year or this so we're worried that she will lose it in tax sale. He has been in and out of the mental hospital and I've spent my HOA money on gas, tolls, home repair supplies, and cheap motels because his house is in PA and has no heat and standing raw sewage. I've gone up weekends to haul out his hoarded trash and try desperately to make things temporarily livable. My brakes and both tail lights went out on my car and took the rest of what I had. Right now? I have about $140. My internet - which I use to look for work because it is impossible to stand at a library terminal and write everything up and submit it with a screaming, fidgety toddler in one arm in the 30 minute allotment they give you - is late. So is everything else. In two or three weeks, I will get an eviction notice. I need about $1200 a month to pay the basics, assuming I keep him in smokeland day care and don't move him somewhere better. Once I'm making that much, I won't qualify for more than maybe $50 a month in food stamps any more.

I thought... I always thought that like, with superhuman effort, you could change your financial situation. Are there things I haven't done like - knocked on doors during the 2-3 hours friends watch Z for a play date and asked if I could rake their yard or something? Yeah. There are and... if I had one ounce of energy, I would. And I constantly feel like a failure every second I am not out begging someone door to door to pay me to do anything at all.

I work, I make our lunches and dinners and pack snacks, keep the house clean, look for work, and constantly fight the urge to sit and weep until I'm an empty shell that will just blow away in the wind. I have sold everything I can think of for less than I'd hoped. I work so, so hard, and am fighting so, so hard, for the very basics - keeping the roof over our heads in our crappy cinder block ghetto house, keeping my 13 year old car running, taking care of my parents and ... I'm failing. I'm failing everyone. it's becoming impossible not to start weeping in front of Zeph and I don't want him to get a vibe of how desperate we are. I keep thinking I have a toe-hold only to have it break, and I keep saying "Well, things will get better!" but I'm starting to realize... they may, but they may not in time to save us, or keep us in our home. We can't live cheaper than $390 HOA a month. I have nothing I can cut except heat, internet for job searching, and the phone I use to keep in touch with my elderly parents.

I don't know why I bothered to put this all down but... maybe to say hey, if I haven't had a lot to say to any of you lately, it's not personal. All I can look at right now is this, it eclipses everything else. And if you harbor some kind of stubborn, hiding belief that people not working or very poor could change it if they really wanted... if you trust me, believe me when I tell you that no. Not always, and probably not often.

I've never been a big believer in prayer, per se, but I'd take some right now.