"Cooking Attracts Roaches"

[NBachers]

14. I've been there- I know the frantic hopelessness- I know the bad choices made to anaesthatize myself

enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I know about being the low-hanging fruit the cops keep going after- "This guy looks like easy pickin's- he must have something illegal about himself."

I know about getting put in jail on my birthday because my car's too outrageously illegal to drive.

The bald tire on the front goes flat, and when you jack up the car to remove it, the extra weight on the back blows out a rear tire.

The baby's crying in the background while my wife asks if I've scraped up enough money for formula yet.

While I'm out, the landlord removes all my property from my home and immediately moves someone else in. That's what I come home to.

A frantic, haunted look in my eyes every time I look in the mirror.

"The People of the United States of America vs. NBachers" - the consequences of a desperate move I made to rescue us from poverty.

And a thousand other things.

Some days I'd shudder when I closed the door to go out in the morning, because the effort it took to get to that point was harder than the effort most people put into their entire day. And I still had the whole day before me.

This woman speaks the truth. She knows; she's there. She ain't a shill, she ain't a huckster. This is what it's really like.