Crisis

You know, one of the things about AmeriCorps is that we're supposed to live like people in poverty. That's why we can't work extra jobs. We have to live on the stipend and budget very closely and hope all balances out in the end.

I don't know if I'm a rare case, or if this happens frequently. But from living with a dangerous, alcohol-addicted ex-con, to moving late one night (with a Marine bodyguard!), to staying with my boss' family, and spending the last bit of free money I have on credit checks in hopes that I will have another place to live this weekend (the rest must go to rent and a deposit)... I am over it.

I don't know why it is so hard for rental places to accept out of state applicants. I don't know why rental applications need to know my checking account number, or the amount of debt I owe. I don't know why they ask for an additional $300 to cover damages by pets... won't the original deposit (which is the same as a first month's rent) be enough? I don't know why I need to make three times the amount of one month's rent in income just to be considered for a place.

Poverty is not new to me. Homelessness is not new to me. Oh sure, if you want to be a dick and only consider street living "homelessness"... well, then I can say I haven't experienced more than a few days of that. But I wrote articles about homelessness, and you don't need to be on the streets. You just need to not have a home.

To live in poverty is to be constantly fighting -- fighting for your rights, to be given adequate care and treatment by police, hospital staff, the government, housing authorities. You have to beg to be taken seriously. Furthermore, if you're only moderately in poverty, people are such assholes that they ask questions like, "If you're so poor, why don't you sell your TV?" as if that will solve the problem. And some days, you just don't want to fight anymore. It's exhausting. The stress accumulates and wears you down to the bone.

I had someone tell me once that if I had enough to donate to others, I must not be in poverty. These things make me want to scream. It is precisely because I have seen the colors of poverty that I am sensitive to it. That I relate to it and wish for it to end. I have seen compassion more from people who have experienced poverty than those who have not. Their compassion may not be in millions of dollars, but they do not raise up their head in power over the person they have helped carry groceries from the store eight blocks away. They do not spend their time emphasizing us and them as a way to feel better about themselves. This is what the middle class does. Those in poverty always feel othered.

Then you end up in bad situations. Places where sexual assaults happen, where alcoholics rage. Where you might not make it out unscathed. If you're in a shelter or on the streets -- your odds of being harmed go up.

I was diagnosed with asthma a month after I started experiencing symptoms. Why didn't I go to the doctor right away? Cost. Always cost. In total, I spent nearly $200 in both doctor visit and meds. $200 more than I had. And now, now that I am in AmeriCorps, I have been told that my meds will be covered but the visit to the doctor to get that prescription will not. Because I have already been diagnosed, my asthma is a "pre-existing condition." Which, for the rest of my life (or until healthcare insurance gets regulated), means that I will never again hold a job in which that preliminary doctor visit, and perhaps even an ER visit or my meds, will ever be covered. And there's nothing I can do about it.

Here is what I have:

• I have a solid middle-class upbringing that allows me to negotiate the world as though I am better off, smarter, and more capable than people in poverty, despite the fact that my bank statements reflect nothing more than that.
• I have a solid grasp of the English language and I do not speak in slang or like a young person, which allows me to present myself as older and more educated.
• I have an education, a college degree, which I can use to prove my status, my intelligence, my ability to learn, and my eagerness to succeed. I do not need to do anything but show this degree to be privileged with what it means.
• I have white skin, which makes others feel positive about who I am, where I came from, and what I can do. I do not face barriers from people who think bad things about those people, whether those people are black, Asian, Latino, or any combination of other.
• I have youth, which means in combination with the other things I have, I will be able to lift myself from poverty into at least the lower middle class with time if all goes right and I do not face substantial life changing problems, such as a disability, or the destruction of my home, or any other things that could go wrong.
• I have hope and persistence and courage, without which I could not navigate this world and still have the ability to hold up my head and demand to be treated with the respect I deserve.

I am lucky in so many ways but sometimes those things don't even feel like enough. This is poverty.