This morning, I checked my account balance online as I do every day. This morning, I found I was overdrawn. One mistake, one moment of forgetting to deposit the last of my resource money yesterday, and now I am overdrawn. My rent check will bounce. Once I cover the cost of that and the bank charge for being overdrawn on top of the original rent payment, I will not have enough money for groceries, never mind anything else.
I have run out of options.
Every week when I go to the grocery store, it seems the price of something has risen. Every time I think I have managed to stay afloat for a little longer, some unexpected financial crisis occurs. What constitutes a financial crisis? Anything. My disability income and child support combine to less than the poverty 2011 poverty guidelines. I have no savings. Every time I try to scrape together something for a rainy day, it pours. I watch prices go up with no way to offset the increases, and I wonder how much longer I can hold on.
Today, I realized I can’t hold on any longer. If I die, the Social Security benefit to my child will be higher than the child support her father pays to me. In other words, he would have access to the support he pays me plus her Social Security benefit to help support her. His overall financial situation is better than mine. It’s only logical that she would be better off financially in that situation. She would have more, and she would have fewer worries about the overall financial stability of the household.
I am worth more to my child dead than I am alive.
Poverty is a prison. People who have never survived day to day in a situation so precarious that one moment of forgetfulness or one wrong purchase can undo the entire house of cards have no way to understand. People who have never made a grocery list mindful of every penny spent on a limited budget cannot understand. People who have never found themselves suddenly unable to work and without anyone to help ease the burden cannot understand.
My family members can’t afford to help me. They are barely surviving themselves. All of our lives come down to bills and how to pay them with limited means. Some of them used to be in better shape. Some might have called them middle class. At one time, the same might have been said for me. The economy and greed of the 1% have made a mockery of the lives we once knew.
Drowning in debt and/or living in fear of a day like today is no way to live. I honestly believe most of us who live this way don’t want pity or handouts or any of the things we are often said to want. We want opportunities. We want to know our children can do better. We want to know there is a chance to have a little more financial security.
We want to be worth more financially to our children alive than we will be dead.
Edited to add: I can't tell you how shocked I was to come to the site this morning and see the response to this post. I find I'm a bit too overwhelmed to properly respond to comments at the moment. Just, thank you for your kindness in reading and reminding me not to give up. It means more to me than I can say.