The Grinch This YearPoverty is signing up with Human Needs because I am determined to give my kids a holiday dinner and a holiday present. It's swallowing my pride, because, if I had to do it just for me, I would skip Christmas.
I am the Grinch this year. I pace my tiny apartment in two left slippers, my Christmas present from Human Needs. My daughter cried with sorrow and frustration when we opened the wrapping on her beautifully decorated gift.
Poverty is the sadness on her face when I explained to her that this will be a very simple Christmas, and she will have to get by on love and music and song. And watching her pull out memories of former happier times when we were a family and had a house filled with fire and laughter. In those days, the refrigerator was always full. “Mama, will we ever be normal?” she asks. I have no answer.
Poverty is the acute sense of longing and nostalgia I get when I see the advertisements for the Nutcracker.
Poverty is driving a car without heat that shakes, rattles and rolls. I am grateful for my chariot and am desperately afraid to jinx my good fortune at having the car in the first place.
Poverty results in relentless worry about paying the rent with the threat of homelessness—real. The result is a jaw chronically clenched from grinding my teeth. Increased stress results in a lowered resistance to disease, and a weakening of the immune system. No wonder the poor are always utilizing the emergency room. With so few doctors accepting Medi-Cal, we have nowhere else to go when the clinics are closed.
Poverty is never having enough of anything.
Poverty is black and white. Oh, I forgot gray.
Poverty is gratitude for the family that anonymously sent me a turkey dinner last year for Thanksgiving. I humbly thank you.
Poverty is forgetting that I once enjoyed all the things I no longer have. It is like being an alien on a strange planet, always on the outside looking in.
Poverty is watching Christmas pass me by.
Lesson 2: The Miracle of Freedom
To make matters worse, my boyfriend didn’t take my financial setback well, to say the least. He accused me of working for the FBI and the CIA, plotting to destroy his business and his life. I was the enemy and needed to be taught a lesson. He even went so far as to threaten to kill me if things didn’t get better. He sat me down in the locked soundproof concrete studio he had built in our garage and proceeded to punch the wall above and beside my head. I felt my hair move as he skimmed the top of my head showing me what he might do the next time.
At first, I didn’t know what to do. There was no money for me to get away from him, but clearly it was time to escape. During the eviction process, I hid boxes in my car and stored them at a girlfriend’s house—my safe house. It was tough to do, because he hardly left our home. Still, I persisted. I knew at some point, I’d need to go on a moment’s notice, and I would want certain things to already be out of our house when the time came.
