What does it truly mean to be poor in the United States? A mini-memoir.

Charlotte, North Carolina—I grew up in a household where we didn’t have the luxury of the modern day. In 2018, we were still using a lot of technology dated in 2010, which was alright. We didn’t have as many clothes as the other kids at school, not as many rooms, not as much food, nor as much of an attitude. We didn’t get by on a high wage; my stepmom worked at Food Lion for around nine years and my dad worked for Continuum for a short period. We house-hopped, moved in and out of our grandparent’s house, gained and lost friends, turned to the internet for help, and employed many other tactics to find a way out. I’m currently typing this from the dining room of my Grandmother’s home, where this portion of my family has lived for the past two years. We don’t have iPhones or string ceiling lights or a Tesla or Twitter blue or any of that extra nonsense. Two of us sleep in the living room on recliners, one in the back room with a bed, one with his grandma an hour and a half away, and the adults have two bedrooms; one for the parents and one for the grandparents. We don’t come from a lot. We get sneered at by pretentious people in public. We get denied job opportunities because of our social status. Building our credit back up from the ground has taken us decades, and we’re still barely scraping the 600s. Our neighborhoods are built on brick and dingy white paneling, while the homes are filled with people who can barely afford to feed their children. We eat chicken and white rice three times a week because it’s cheap and fast. Our home isn’t built to sustain eight people, but that’s the way it is. We still pay for cable because it’s much better than paying for nineteen streaming services. We don’t allow snobby, preppy, pretentious, stuck-up hogs to get us down. Why? Because we know that we’ll never be like them, or even come close to it. We’re broke, sure, but we have morals instilled in us that they could never compare to. 

I went through public school (before I was pulled out and brought into homeschool) undergoing constant meetings with the counselor, excelling at academics while my peers faltered, and getting relentlessly bullied for my wealth status. I would take food home from the cafeteria and bring it home so that I had a bit more to eat. My brother would steal the extra snacks that cost money from the cafeteria and bring them home so he had something else to eat, although I had presented other options to him. Public school ruined my brother. He was a bully before, but public school made it worse. He’d come home with nosebleeds, black eyes, or ripped clothes. I tried to help him out, but it was no use. “Why do we have to be so broke?” He asked me night after night for over a year. I didn’t understand, either. I didn’t want to understand, but eventually, the truth was hanging in my face like a dangling porcelain and crystal chandelier in the home of a wealthy white woman. I’ve always imagined what it would be like to be rich. What it would be like to have hair cascading down my shoulders, in a bright purple gown with thousands of layers that hit the floor like a puff pastry. Walking slowly down spiral staircases, trimmed with gold, acting as if I owned BlackRock. I used to love the idea of waltzing around my ballroom, with a tall, dark, sophisticated man with long hair and a deep voice in my arms. Then I’d wake up, throw on a thrifted polo shirt, and head off to school, where I’d eat breakfast, do my work, and go home. The cycle repeated for years.

As I’m writing this, I still face half of the same struggles I once faced under the guise of public education. People don’t like doing business with us because of our economic status. Our home is on the verge of dilapidation, we’re crammed into one tight space, and the only help we receive barely does anything. We’re on the verge of getting out. We’re almost there. We’ve been “almost there” for seven years. Every time we almost make it, someone or something always beats us back down. Where is the government throughout all of this? Squabbling with each other and putting on a mask of altruism while they’ve truly done nothing for us. Both sides. “We need to rebuild the lower and middle class!” Take that somewhere else, quit telling us — the people you swear that you’ll help — what you’re going to do (or what WE should do) and do something. We’ve been suffering for far too long. While you all at the top enjoy your fancy homes and your lavish vacations, what do you think happens to us? Rape. Murder. Overdose. Domestic abuse. Famine. Thirst. Suicide. Theft. The list goes on. The exploitation of the lower class for the benefit and upheaval of those already ahead is a societal tactic that has been employed for several millennia; one that must be abandoned in due time. Changing the system we’ve used for tens of thousands of years is an extreme feat that requires patience and a hell of a lot of lawmaking over several decades, it’s a requirement if we want to live in the society that so many claim America to hold up the standards of. In the words of a very popular singer-songwriter; “America…America has a problem.” For a decade and a half, I have been wrongfully subjected to the worst of the worst, as has my family for much longer. Tell me, what have we done to deserve it? The answer is nothing. Millions of Americans are left behind by society who didn’t do anything to deserve it. We’re cast down as crackpots and weirdos when the only reason half of us use drugs or sell them is to relieve pain or to make a quick buck. The Government funneled crack into our neighborhoods and blamed black people four decades ago, which only made it worse. The war on drugs, Dobbs V. Jackson, Right To Work, Taft-Hartley, any tax other than a VAT or LVT, it’s all built to bring us to our knees and force us to beg for a new life. We did not ask for this, you gave it to us and ran like the wind. You bestowed upon us your hard labor and your dirty work so you could bask in the benefits. It’s been this way since the Industrial Revolution. We make dirt wages ($14/hour is NOT livable when you have kids), live in crack shacks, drive 20-year-old cars, and cater to YOUR needs and YOUR wants. The only way to describe it is oppressive and unfair.

I lived with my mother from March to September last year. I had moved from my father’s house to her hotel room because she lived in the city, so there were more opportunities. Whether the opportunities in question were social, economic, political, or anything else, it was just a better place to be than bumfuck rural North Carolina. My mother was dating a man named Melvin at the time. Melvin was a young man with big ambitions, and while he was emotionally and mentally immature, he was a fun guy and meant well. Melvin eventually proposed to my mother (with my blessing) in the bathroom of the hotel room we all shared with my grandmother. He lined up all of her squish mallows in the bathtub (made sure it was dry first, of course), sent me in to go buy her a Pepsi at the local 7/11, and when she got home from work, he dropped to one knee. Eventually, we moved out of the hotel room, and into the home of Melvin’s cousin. This is when things started to go downhill. Mom and Melvin worked at a Cookout in Southern Charlotte, while we lived in the North. Getting to work took too long for them to drive back and forth, so they frequently stayed close to where we used to live, leaving me uptown with Melvin’s cousin and her daughter. One day, I got tired of Melvin’s annoying antics (he was a skinny white guy who loved working out, Elon Musk, sports cars, and drinking that gross protein powder), so I went to my dad’s for the weekend. I got into the car with my mother, and my little sister Evelyn (formerly Eevee Chanel, but we’ll get to that later) was in the backseat, and mom was holding a fake smile on her face. I asked Mom why the baby was in the car and why Melvin couldn’t watch her, and she looked at me and said “Melvin’s in the ICU.” This was no shock to me, as he had overdosed three times before, so I blankly retorted “Again?”. “This time it’s really bad.” She began fidgeting and I could see her fighting back tears while she was just trying to get home. “When I found him, he was gray and limp on the floor. He looked like a corpse.” He was. He was a corpse. He was declared brain dead not even a week later and was buried next to a close relative of his. I began to see less and less of mom. She stayed downtown so she could take care of the baby and keep up with work, and I stayed alone uptown. By myself in a 2/bed-2/bath townhome, which I was now responsible for keeping clean and looking after. Melvin’s cousin and her daughter were relatively busy people, so they were rarely home. 

For the longest stretch, I hadn’t seen my mother for two weeks. I had texted her several times asking her to bring home groceries and she always blew me off. She would divert the topic or just plain tell me “no”, stating that she couldn’t afford it. I was fed up. At the end of the two weeks, I had finally caught my mom at home for more than two hours. My (now ex) boyfriend, in Thomasville, was opening up his home to me for a few days and I graciously accepted the offer. She drove me up there, and I stayed for three days. During my stay with him, he made several attempts to sexually assault me and made several jokes/references towards murdering me. When I got home, I dropped my stuff down and went to the bathroom, and my mom yelled from the hallway that she would see me at eight that night. She didn’t come home for two days. I didn’t think anything of it until I woke up to thousands of messages from her friends. She was found unresponsive on the floor of a hotel room and no one had heard anything from her for seventeen hours. She was foaming at the mouth. The man she was with, Ian, who just so happened to be my late stepfather’s best friend, was no longer with us at the time they had found them. My mother barely made it through and was in the ICU for several weeks. At this point, I had no choice but to go back to my father. To this day, I am still with my dad, typing away at the same desk I was berating my mother at six months ago. I fell prey to asking for validation from people online, which backfired. I invested my time in mock political roleplays, augmenting realities away from my own. I became a shell of myself. 

The only reason I can find today for what my mother did is that she was done. She was tired of the way her life was going and wanted an out. No one hops themselves up on Meth, Xanax, Fentanyl, and Percocet if they aren't ready to die. These are the side effects of the American system that so many hold so dear. She’s doing much better now and gave Eevee Chanel up for adoption, to which extent a well-off Jewish couple (fundamentalist Zionists that sing gospel music as a career) adopted her and renamed her Evelyn Rose. They’ll give her a better life than the one I had and will take care of her better than my peers took care of me growing up. However, I don’t envy her. She will most likely grow up a pretentious, hyper-religious snob who doesn’t care about me or any of the people who got her to where she is today. She will forget my mom ever existed and will detest her mother and father for what they did to her while she was an infant. She won’t understand that she made her way out, something the rest of us will never be able to do. That’s one of the main issues with our current system; Only some of us make it out and the rest of us spend our lives wallowing in regret. Some of us regret not working hard enough, and some of us regret working too hard. Some of us regret having a family, and some regret not spending enough time with theirs. Some regret being born, and some wish there weren’t a concept such as death. Whatever the case may be, enough is enough. The “greatest country on earth” should not allow its citizens to abandon their kids for weeks on end just to try to kill themselves a little while later. The greatest country on earth is one of peace, not one which masquerades and tries to hide the fact that over a quarter of their nation is at rock bottom, struggling to survive. You can’t silence us. We exist. We’re here. We aren’t going shopping, we can’t afford it. We aren’t helping the economy, the economy doesn’t help us. We aren’t making the best out of a bad deal, a bad deal is making the best out of us. We can’t thrive under these conditions. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have all lost meaning. No one cares. People pretend they do so that people will look at them like heroes or saviors, but they don't. From the most populist politician to the most pretentious “tax the rich” influencer, no one has done a thing to help us.

It’s going to stay that way, regardless of what hope you may have. Just leave it be. Our system isn't built for change.

Article authored by Diana Allar, opinion columnist and political contributor for the Radical Times. Dedicated to Heather, Melvin, Evelyn, Kylie, and Melody.