Tag Archives: poverty

The Scariest Thing to Ever Happen to Me

20 Friday Nov 2015

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Sitting here at the computer, having just posted a catch-up blog for the first time since July. I’ve been depressed for that long. Sheep. No job is worth living like that; what was the point to work really hard to become mentally well if it was only to become mentally ill again?

The idea of quitting a PAYING JOB terrifies me; appalls me with its stupidity. It was only a part-time job–I knew that I couldn’t handle anything more, at least until my recovery got stronger, so luckily I didn’t lose my disability. I won’t starve, and there is a roof over my head. What amazing luck! How glorious a miracle! For reals, that sentence always makes me feel like I’ve won the lottery. I guess skipping some meals so your kid gets to eat and becoming homeless–twice–changes your perspective.

Anyway. The scary thing. I’ve just realized that–I have to write. And possibly do other art. It would be swell if I find a way to monetize that, but if I don’t, I am choosing to give up the luxuries of clothes shopping and always being able to eat out (somewhere cheap). If I don’t, I’ll get sicker; I might die. And I don’t want to die.

I have a strange little life, being mentally ill. My plans just changed at the last minute this morning, and for a few minutes my ADHD had a tantrum while it rebooted. Hate that. I would love to be spontaneous, but my brain chemistry has different ideas. I have to work around that every day. It’s a challenge to just be me, let alone living life on life’s terms. Why make it even worse?

If you’re not an artist, you may not understand this; if you are an artist, then you will: We are wired differently. If we don’t create, we wither and die. Our growth stops. Our joy vanishes. And then we start looking at knives and pills with a certain longing, as we calculate the odds: How much longer can I stay alive just for Them? Because staying alive for US is about as appetizing as the freezer-burned bargain-brand burrito you forgot about last June: A hard thing to swallow; we chew each day, trying to overlook its taste of cardboard.

I was definitely in the burrito stage, realizing at the end of each weekend that I had to go back to that place. At last the tears broke through my concrete facade and I told my boss (who has been the main thing keeping me in the job; I stay because I love her) that I wasn’t coming in this week. We have next week off anyway; by its end I will have exercised (and exorcised) my rusty, weeping brain by finishing my NaNoWriMo project, and I’ll see if I’ve built up enough residual joy to garner a few more small paychecks.

Very small paychecks: All they buy are the depression force-feeding me the bargain-brand burritos, pre-wrapped in neglect; only in my field they all smell faintly of unwashed bodies and of urine.

Blizzards, Paychecks, and Sloth

26 Monday Jan 2015

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My governor has shut down public transit for tomorrow, which means no work for me. Although I do have a vision of making the two mile hike over the Longfellow Bridge, pretending to be Eliza crossing the ice, or Matthew Henson, or maybe one of the Yeti who might be poking their snouts into my 2014 unfinished WriMo, I probably wouldn’t end up being paid anyway. We have a policy of being closed when the Boston public schools are, which is a pain in the sheep because the Boston public schools are wussies. Last month when we had a cold snap they closed down, which at least gave me a *quiet* day here at home, as the Cambridge schools laughed and told the kiddies to pile on another sweater–as well they should.

But tomorrow there’s no arguing from me, because we’re SUPPOSEDLY getting up to 30 inches by Wednesday morning. Even the new boots Sunny gave me this past weekend ain’t gonna cut it. I’m just hoping we’re dug out and back to quasi-normal by Wednesday, because we had two weeks of enforced “vacation” cutting into the budget this month as it is. Grrrr. I had always assumed that this was a way of balancing the department budget, but was told when I complained to the leadership committee that it was “just tradition” because “peers don’t ever take breaks.” Until my as-unwhiny-as-possible email, it apparently hadn’t really sunk in that “peers don’t really like being forced to eat ramen noodles,” and now for 2015 it’ll be only one week break. Yay!

But it is what it is, and with both spawn working, we’re hanging in there, doing much better than we have in the past, and much better than the people I serve, so I can’t really complain. (Much.) So much for blizzard, so much for paychecks, and on to the sloth!

Snow days have an American magic about them, because even the vaunted Protestant Work Ethic has to bow before Nature’s divine tantrum. I suspect we’re really supposed to clean out that closet we’ve been ignoring, but instead everybody treats it like a free Saturday, when we can’t even do errands because everything is closed. (Sort of like Christmas, only the Chinese restaurants may not make it either.) We sleep in, we read trash (which is all I ever read anyway, even though my trash has mellowed for a century or so), we eat whatever we find in our larders. (This depends on when we got to the store the night before and whether or not we staggered home in a daze, clutching only the last battered packet of toilet paper and half a box of butter.)

I myself will be doing at least some work, as I have a couple hours of graphics stuff piled up and I haven’t entirely forgotten the paycheck–and there’s always *shudder* query letters and Real Writing–unless, of course, the power goes out. But I have charged and loaded up my Kindle accordingly, and can always do the next stage of dollhouse repair, until it gets dark at teatime. Then all bets are off, and I don’t know what will happen. We might even play a board game by candlelight–at least until the cold drives us to huddle under our blankets in defeat. I’m almost looking forward to it, because it always makes our usual impoverished prosperity so shiny and valuable by contrast.

All in all, I’m a lucky girl. Even if Amaterasu the ferret did drag the insoles out of my new boots.

Update: Boss called and informed me that Boston schools are closed Wednesday too. Sigh.

And it’s only Tuesday . . .

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

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I’m having a bad week. And it’s only Tuesday.

Yesterday I went to my studio and found that my portfolio was missing. Plain old gone, and I have no idea where several other pieces of art went either. (They’d been held separate, having been in shows.) Nobody as much as mentioned the $90 check I’m owed for a piece that sold (for a hundred bucks less than my asking price because I caved)–God knows where that is in their machinery over there. All the people who would know what’s going on are on vacation this week.

On my way home, I thought of stopping by the farmer’s market, which has historically been kind enough to not only take food stamps, but to double their value in the little cards or plastic coins they give to pay the vendors. Thought of grabbing a bunch of basil for this fried rice dish my friend had told me about. And whatever else looked good. Farmer’s markets are great for the “What IS that? Hmm, let’s find out” enlargement of the palate.  Although I found having to use food stamps humiliating even before the last election year told me what a waste of oxygen I was, it was worth it to even see what these heirloom tomato things looked like.

So I went up to the place where they take your food stamps and do the conversion thingy, and was flabbergasted. No doubling. (Oh well, whatever.) But no face value. Instead, they were halving. E.g., if I gave them $20 off my Card o’ Shame–they would give me $10 in tokens. There are so many things wrong with this that it would take a really long blog which would end in my fingers hitting random keys to indicate random rage-filled sputtering. What immediately struck me is that this is the sort of food stamp fraud people have been pompous about: I’d be selling food stamps: getting a value from my stamps–and somebody else would be turning a profit: What the sheep were they doing with the extra money?

I was a Nice Lady, and didn’t tear off the guy’s head, move aside his laminated tag saying that he was the SNAP/EBT person, and piss down his neck. I just asked him twice over to make sure that was what it did and went away before I cried from being too tired and having skipped lunch and the injustice of it all.

I went home and wrote not-tantrumy email to the city employee listed on the website, and she called me within five minutes and was horrified and disbelieving. She promised to look into this, and I am interested in what she will find. I also posted this on my Facebook page, which alerted the brimstone-breathing professional lobbyist friend, who really doth hunger and thirst after righteousness. Bwah ha, crooked market people!

And then I found out that for the second time I had been passed over to take a professional training class which I need to retain my employment. (They won’t actually sack me, thank God. It wasn’t my fault–there are only 30-some spaces and over 100 people apply. And it means I won’t have to leave my house every August Wednesday at 6 a.m. to go to Woostah. But still.)

So I curled up and cried so piteously that my daughter gave me her Klondike bar.

Today, I woke up feeling better, and went to work, where I had the usual Tuesday case of too-much-to-do-and-not-enough-time. No badness there. I stopped off at the Indian store on the way home, to grab rice and incense . . .

. . . and somehow . . .

. . . lost my wallet.

Fortuitously, my bank was on the next corner and shut down my card immediately, leaving me a week of replacing the other stuff at a price of some $50. Which isn’t the nightmare burden it once would have been, but will of course also take a great deal of time.

Needless to say, I’m depressed. I am superstitious enough to wonder if my run of bad luck will continue, which scares me. My life is filled with fragile pets and people and computers.

I lost my wallet this winter, and to my joy and amazement, the guy who found it immediately tracked me down and handed it over. No such luck so far. The finder (enriched by about $4) knows that I’m poor and disabled, and knows where I live and has my business card. But nada. The likelihood here seems that it’s your average creep. I am bummed beyond crying.

Instead, I posted the next-to-last chapter of Damascus, and decided to whinge to you here. Let’s just cross our fingers about tomorrow. My daughter is going out and getting me a wallet with a chain. Maybe it will be pink. Or leather or something. Ya never know.