How Do I Love Thee, Poverty?

Making peace with "what if."

I set myself free from poverty fear about 5 years ago. I said OK, I'm always struggling, I'm always a half step from homelessness and there is never enough. OK this is it, I can't fight this anymore.

I made it my goal to fall in love with never having more than barely enough.

I determined to accept this reality and stop struggling, stop beating myself up, live on beans and the food bank.

I started looking at homeless facilities as a resource like OK if I become homeless can that be OK?

I looked closely at tent cities as a viable place to live and the people in them as future friends.

This decision triggered so much sheer terror and shame at the thought of everyone seeing me at the homeless shelter, the sting of their pity and disgust for me. Their facial expressions looking away from me.

“Look how far she's fallen! OMG she's living in the street, what happened to her?!”

And I stayed there in the swampy licey grossness of my wretched imagination.

I imagined myself filthy, ragged, nothing but a bag of what little food I could get.

I imagined myself asking strangers for their leftovers, for their change, and their clothes.

I did that for several days and it was torture. I lived out, with as much intensity as I could muster, my worst fears and shame scenarios to the point oofseeing myself dying from the elements.

Finally something snapped like a cheap chopstick (what happened to the sturdy chopsticks from Sri Thai?) and I saw that death wasn't so bad. I'm already not afraid of dying and as a Medium I know we go on.

So what was I fighting with poverty so hard about anyway?

I saw it wasn't death I feared, it was shame. It was the idea of other people's judgment, it was actually my Ego's fear of becoming one of "those people.”

When I let myself sink in and live that life fully as possible, it dissolved.

I no longer see homeless people as the worst thing for me to become. I see all the people trying to help, the soup kitchens and food banks and clothing drives, which are not enough but they are something more than nothing.

I found I didn't, and don't care anymore, what people think about me. And not in a fuck you kind of way, but in an I honestly don't care kind of way.

Another benefit? I have a missing tooth I don't want to replace because of the extensive bone grafting it would involve. I used to have shame about it - especially when it first happened and I caught colleagues staring - but not anymore.

Nothing like that matters anymore.

Once I fully accepted being and even dying from poverty the whole constructed story dissolved into ash.

And you know, roses grow to great heights from the ashes of burnt false storybooks.

So much of life is colored by nothing but a scary movie with a terrifying soundtrack. I've stopped watching that movie. I no longer listen to that soundtrack.

You can make the choice to stop it now, too.

I am making more money now than ever in my life. It might not last. It might all go away. I might end up old and sick, at the mercy of the non-existent US healthcare system, just me and my bag living on the streets.

That's truly OK with me. I know I can ask for help without shame. I know too that anyone who would judge me doesn't deserve any of my presence, especially not my empty wallet and my light-up-the-room smile with its missing tooth :-)

XO,

LMW

P.S. Another point to consider is the absolute awfulness of looking at a segment of our population and the thought of joining them is your, “Oh Lordy, anything but that!”, fear.

Once in college, I was in a social work class and we were going around sharing our worst fears. One woman said no matter how tired she was she worked out every day because she couldn't bear the thought of becoming fat.

“Being fat is my worst nightmare. I’d rather die!”, she shuddered. And there I was at my heaviest sitting right across from her. I was shocked but sat there face on fire and silent because in those days I didn't say diddly or squat.

I was this woman's worst nightmare. She'd rather be dead than look like me. And yet I did that same judgy bullshit to people experiencing homelessness.

Shame on us all who see other human beings as abhorrent. May we explore these judgments with compassionate curiosity and unravel them immediately!