growing up poor

We were the people that brought home a shopping cart.

I remember that when I was little and lived with my mom and dad, we had no car. We used to have to walk to the grocery store, which was only about a mile from the house. But when you are young…that mile felt like 20. Seriously, I googled the distance while writing this post and I am shocked it’s only a mile. It felt like it took forever to get there and back.

The worst part of walking to and fro was the fact that we took a shopping cart home with us every time. My parents would push the shopping cart home, up-hill on a main street, and I just remember the embarrassment of it. Trying to hide my face as cars drove by, in fear that someone from my school would see me and my family. I was young, but old enough to have experienced bullying by then. I knew that seeing me with my family, trekking a grocery cart home with us would not help in the popularity department. And good lawd, I needed help desperately.

Kids are brutal folks.

You’re just like me, trash.

Being poor also meant not being above taking handouts or second-hand anything. Like I’ve written before, I used to get free clothes for the winter. I got free lunches at school and was an Angel Tree kid. My parents were on food stamps. Pride wasn’t holding us back from taking help. That’s all fine.

In reality, my parents were basically ill-equipped to work. With two kids, they needed assistance and that in itself isn’t embarrassing. There really weren’t any other options for them.

What makes me look back and cringe a bit are some of the more creative ways we found to get by. Like the fact that we used to go garbage picking in our neighborhood. Yes. We sifted through people’s trash. Just ew.

It helped that the main trash pile for the housing plan we lived in was right outside our front door. We would walk past on garbage night and eye the bag piles and discarded shit, trying to discover if there was anything worth grabbing. I think we got a sofa this way. Let’s just take the trash bags off it and drag that sucker down the little hill and right into our front door. Why not? *vomit*

Yet even now, as an adult, my eyes still have the habit of scanning the street line on garbage nights to see what’s out there. I will say, I haven’t taken anything in a very, very long time. I’m at a place in my life where another person’s trash doesn’t have to be my treasure. It was a hard habit to grow out of though.

Money….

Garbage picking got us stuff, but having money was way better. And, throughout my years, I’ve found many ways to get money. As I got older, and more “mature”, the ways to get money became more honest. But, there was a period in my life when my desire to have money made me do things I’m not proud of. NO, I was not a hooker if that’s what you are thinking. Good God. First there’s my body issues and second, I don’t like sex that much to find money a compelling enough reason to want to do it with a stranger. 

No, I did things like empty the lint canisters in the vacuum stands at the local car wash. Sifting through the piles of dirt and debri to grab the change (and sometimes dollars!!!) that got sucked up when people were cleaning the insides of their car. The pure excitement of digging through the dirt and uncovering a $5 bill is glorious. Like I was a pirate or some shit like that!

The vacuum canister scrounging is more scrappy and somewhat sad. Embarrassing because I am not really proud of the fact that I had to do that….but it was kind of creative. No, what I am really not proud of is the fact that when I got older, this scrappiness evolved into behavior like stealing money from the house I was cleaning for with my aunt. Or stealing money from the people I was babysitting for. I look back that those instances with pure shame. I try not to regret anything in my life, because I brought me to this spot today. But I broke trust and took from people that were kind – and that wasn’t right.

Don’t worry. I got caught and was punished. There’s actually very little that I did back in the day that I didn’t get caught and punished for. I was a bad liar and apparently not made to be a professional thief. 

Regardless, these actions stemmed from being poor and wanting so badly to have money that I felt the need to take it from people. I’m not using being poor as an excuse for this behavior at all. I shouldn’t have done it. But I don’t think I would have stolen if I didn’t have the background that I did.

Avoiding homelessness

At a young age, I remember overhearing my parents talk one night about money and that they were worried about us being evicted from our current home. They mentioned having to sleep on the streets. That thought was frightening to me. I fell asleep that night wondering how we would carry my bed on the streets. I had a recurring dream afterwards that I was sleeping in my bed underneath a bridge in downtown Pittsburgh, cold and scared.

I was fortunate enough to never be homeless. But that fear was there. The fear of not having enough money. The fear of not having a roof over my head. The fear of those things further alienating me from other kids and never fitting in.

Never enough. Never, never.

This childhood made me scrappy. It made me make some serious mistakes and ultimately learn from them. It made me realize that if I want something, I need to work for it. I can’t live off hand me downs or other people’s trash. I needed to make something of myself. I couldn’t have the life I wanted any other way.

Being poor made me the frugal (not cheap) person I am today.  Yes, I am the person that fills up detergent bottles at the grocery store because there’s 2 damn inches left at the top and plenty of room for more liquid. The person that keeps the tags on everything until I know I want to keep it. The person that lets it mellow if it’s yellow because water isn’t free (ok, this is somewhat gross, but I mainly do it because I care about the environment).

But I’m also the person that sent myself to college, got a great job, and makes great money. I constantly work to create more wealth for my family. I own property and run 2 successful AirBnB’s. I have a 401K and investment accounts set up for each of my children. I am working to publish children’s books and find ways to make this blog generate revenue. I teach my kids the importance of money because I want them to have a full life without worry of being poor.

I did and do all of these things because I was poor. 

I am deeply grateful and proud that I was able to overcome the obstacles from my childhood and have the life I have today. My life could have ended up drastically different if I was a different type of person or if I continued down that path of stealing. Everyone has their unique struggles, so I don’t think my experiences are that special. However, not everyone shares at the level I do, either. I do it for me, as therapy, but also to help others. There are parts of your life that will either break you or shape you. And you need to decide which one it will be. I will never be broken.