I wish the economy would hurry up and reach those of us at the bottom.

[Demo_Chris]

56. I am in basically the same place, so I feel for you

My only source for food now is the food bank. They have a rule where you can only get some food 17 times in your lifetime. We had to use them a few years back, so things are not looking all that great.

And yes, I have an internet account. Yes, I am aware that to many here this is proof that I am not REALLY poor, that any problems I have are my own creation, and that I am a lazy loser leaching off society. I will address these points individually.

POOR: Yes, I am. Yes, the twenty bucks or so my internet costs me is arguably waste, but I need it to try and get back on my feet. My business, now basically on death's door unless I can borrow some money to get it back going again, is the only chance I have. But the internet is also my entertainment. Yes, entertaininment. Diversion. Which leads me to point two.

MY PROBLEMS / MY CREATION: I am, without a doubt, an absolute failure at life. Unlike some other poor people who have done everything right and still ended up on the bottom, I cannot claim this. I have made so many mistakes I could not begin to count them. I've had opportunities and wrecked them, and always in hindsight the mistakes were obvious, and yet I am fully capable of making them yet again. Because that's the kind of fuck up I am. Some people, for example, wouldn't dream of going out to Applebees or wherever until they had stocked away a couple grand in the bank, but not me -- even when it's bitten me in the ass before. That's me, being a fuck up.

I don't drink or do drugs, but I roll my own cigarettes. Another waste of money that I cannot afford. Another proof that I am a failure. If my life were a book that would be the title. The internet as well I suppose. The hundred bucks I have spent over this winter wouldn't be that huge of a difference now, but it would damn sure help. I try not to think about my life because when I do I question why I am even wasting my time. I feel like I do not deserve to be happy.

Me, the LAZY MOOCH: This is no doubt correct. When I have a job I work bloody hard. I try to be the best, and I mean that sincerely. No boss has ever had cause for complaint about how hard I try or how successful at this I am. I have never once been fired from a job. Been laid off though. Had lots of bad luck that I didn't properly prepare for. My fault, always.

But as the years have gone on the struggle has worn me down. Poverty does not INSPIRE, it suffocates. Poverty doesn't make you want to get up, it commands you lie down. That's the difference between being broke and being poor. Broke is temporary, you know if you can just get through this one thing, just hang on a little while, things will get better. Poverty is when you know they wont get better, that for you there probably is no better, that every crisis will just lead straight into the next. If you don't know, this is the reason why you see poor people, who cannot possibly afford to waste the money, buying that candybar or that meal at IHOP instead of carefully saving that cash for the next crisis.

They have reached that place where they believe, where they KNOW, that no matter what they do that crisis is coming. It's always coming, and that candybar or that beer or that cigarette won't stop or delay it's arrival. Like the white wall of a tsunami on the horizon, it's coming, so fuck it have a Snickers. For those in poverty that next tsunami wave is ALWAYS visible if you look, and life is a desperate struggle swimming from one bity of flotsam to the next and hanging on. That's really what it's like, and if you are there you know it.

But yeah, that makes someone like me lazy in the traditional sense. I could clean something right now. I do have some work I could do, maybe it would even help somehow. Instead, I am writting this garbage that no one will likely read and that no one should care about. But there it is. The next wave is almost here now and I am tired of swimming.

I created my business at what turned out to be the start of the great recession. I did not know how bad it would get. I have worked very hard, unbelievably hard, and every year we have offered more and better service, but every year our earnings have been just a little worse than the last. Most of the country has run out of money to spend. And it's not like I have a whole lot of options but to keep going. I have no real skills and no one is hiring anyway.

It's a seasonal business (and to many it's probably a stupid one), but my family (I work with my wide and daughter) has somehow managed to keep it afloat and paying our bills for the last five years. Probably because we try our best to deliver the BEST to our customers. But now, like I said, we are out of money and options. We had hopef to make it through another rough winter and start again, but we failed. Now that it looks like the economy might FINALLY begin making a comeback it looks like all of our work for the last five years will be wasted.

I'll stop there. Everyone reading this (assuming anyone is) has their own sad story to tell. I'm a few grand shy of getting going again. Everyone is a few grand shy of something. Anyway, if you actually read this whole rambling and pointless rant, thanks for reading! I apologize if it was long and you wasted your time, but I was writing it for me I guess.