Tuesday, 27 November 2012
growing up in poverty?
Recently ive been realising that infact my family situation really consisted of poverty, I always knew we were poor but I didnt really consider it as dirt poor as in below the povery line.
I realised this beacause ive been meeting my partner for lunch and her friends are not well off but they always go out at lunch and find somewhere to eat this seems normal social behaviour but today I felt like crap because frankly I just know I cant afford to pay for me and my parnter to have a burger so I just didnt eat. the way it is with our money is if I spend £10 that could be up to 3 meals and I know we cant just use that on a wimpy burger but I just got a bit annoyed because im always having to do this whole thing of saying no I dont need that, I dont need a sausage roll I can get it cheaper at the super market, I dont need that bread I can get the cheap stuff ect ect. I look around and I see a huge fat person and if you go out to eat in a fast food place you always do and they move so slow theres no way they could be working that day so what possible use could that have to society that would mean that they are able to eat huge amounts of crap all day? I then started to look at other people and realised the whole fact that most people dont have to save for clothes and the average person has a phone thats only 1 year old and just that when im in the supermarket there are pleanty of people getting the more expensive products while my time is consisted of working out which place has the cheapest kitchen roll.
Why does that matter? its simple because if I dont save 10p here 10p there only get x products that are normally £1.65 when they are £1 then simply I would not have enough money to buy all of the things I require to live off and that treat of "new clothes" or a gift for a friend or anything like that would never come and it would just be day in day out and a grey existance.
Sometime socially this poverty is a problem simply for small things that others take for granted such as holidays abroad, I had friends who would go on a holiday abroad yearly to their place in turkey even if they didnt go on holiday anywhere else. Others may not see this as a big deal but to me this was just a reminder that I have never been on holiday ever, not even a camping holiday within the U.K until recently I could list nights that I didnt sleep at home on my hand as weekends stayed at my Grandmothers, the week me and my sister stayed at my uncles and the night I stayed over a friends (this was the whole list until I was 19). In addition to this whenever I get asked about hobbies Its not easy either as I grew up in the middle of no where with little to do I just helped with whatever I could and did what was availiable to do so mostly helping with gardening to the point that I would try and make a automatic watering system. I never had the chance to really try to be a part of anything including after school clubs as my parents wouldnt pay the petrol to collect me after (the same reason I never had afterschool detentions). I would have loved to do archery but still to this date have never had the chance and alot of this comes down to a lack of personal development where I have not developed a clear personality so people dont trust me. in part because im am a potential but of unknown direction and I can not define myself as I dont have particular feelings in any directions I just analyse and compare.
since the age of around 12 Ive known when we faced additional hardship so needing £600 to fix the car or this or that bill and as a adult I can deal with it but a child knowing these things when they have no way of changing anything is harsh and has lasting effects. now its hard to shake the feeling that each problem I solve wont be followed by a additional problem for example march jobcentre fixed mess up and payed out real money so with planning I went to university where in september student fiance messed up and didnt pay the right amount then ended up paying a reduced amount because their calculator doesnt work properly. With this I have the feeling of impending doom so rather than doing assignments im thinking about whats going wrong and how im going to run out of money. Additionally each problem is more than a individual its a process with no end so you feel like if I fix this one Ill have to deal with the next and after a while you fail to see the point and get more pecimistic.
The biggest problem is that life is not sterile when I try to study for a degree I also have to deal with emotional termoil, feeding myself, sleeping, money, family rubish, shelter and everything else with all of these things effecting eachother it means when Im having trouble with one it can make others more difficult. As maslows hierarchy of needs states we need to deal with our more physical needs such as eating before dealing with self-fufilment, As yet I still hope to manage to get to the point where I actually look at my socal requirements as they have been deglected for long enough.
why am I starting a blog?
Im starting a blog why? well because then I can talk to myself and remember it later. Im trying to tell myself it is because my memory is messing up and it will help me recall things but in truth its more likley I just want to make a big list of why my life sucks which hopefully will be fun in someways and will seem like a soap however I will not exagerate (inless making a insult/joke to myself).
so a starting list of resons why it sucks to be me:
1. family - mine sucks will need many pages for this one.
2. simply being a minority within a vast majority.
3. actually caring about other people and the world
4. having standards
5. being born
6. understanding that a bad situation doesnt just happen or that things can change
7. money money money always being a issue
8. being told situations will never change
9. being told to give to charities when im a charity case myself
10. feeling morally wrong for giving to generic"africa charities".
the breif of each of these points:
1. my family never did anything serious that directly harmed me and so I was never taken away or helped ever so for that I could argue many people with a worse family would have been better off, basically due to my family I have a distorted world view and have realised that I lived in poverty with no oppertunites for no real reason (this will need further detail).
2. being a minority within a vast majority. I dont know about other people but I am currently 21, white, black hair, blue eyes, average build, live with my partner (who I intend to for the rest of my life and not in a overdramatic childish way its just im someone that couples for life its the way I am) I am a little colour blind (mostly just greens and yellows a little with orange I think) have been told im dyslexic and autistic (had alot of tests), I have no physical problems and never took anything as a dysability I didnt even take extra time for exams. Now however im feeling really disadvantaged because it feels like anyone else who doesnt have family who can assist them can just get some help because they are either female, pregnant, have ADHD or they are black and I understand there are some reasons why people need extra help I just feel some of it is disproportionate and sometimes there are more cracks that i always manage to fall through.
3. I worry sometimes that because I do volounary work and care about other people that I put more effort into helping others when I should really be single minded in helping myself. I also feel that if I were to push all of my effort into making something of myself rather than buying something huge to celebrate after a thing IVE done the likley thing is ill donate it to a charity or just not take the credit and never get anywhere. I sometimes wonder if this is why no one on the top ever really does anything to help, just because you wouldnt stay on top if you had a heart and didnt safegard yourself before others.
4. being in horrible situations then realising that if I didnt keep to my own standards things would be easier. for example being on benifits and them messing up and only having £50 a week for me and my partner while she was studying and I was looking for work and both doing charity work, this meant that after running around trying to actually survive off £50 a week by buying the cheapest thing in each shop and then dealing with the jobcentre I only ever had a small amount of time and energy to actually look for work. I realised later however the whole time we had a number of options that would have fixed the situation, Alcohol or drugs: if either of us were addicted to something we would have got more money, getting pregnant/having a child: if we had a child our benifits situation would have been fixed (we would have got enough to live off then they would have given child benifit ontop). Crime: generally crime would have helped so fraud would have given us money, shoplifting food and the downside? 1. arrested (your given food and a warm place to sleep over night (we didnt have money for heating either)) 2. put in prison (more food, more shelter, no bills, potential job while in prison) 3. after your let out (provided accomedation that has to fit standards, benifits are fixed, helped into work and self employment by organisations such as princes trust as you are no longer a majority you not fit into a minority that is "prejudged"). as you can see it can work to your advantage to be immoral and I so far have not had any good reason to keep doing the moral thing other than its who I am.
* I may turn this into a guide on what to do if your homeless.
5. being born. by this its again back to family I was born into a bad situation and feel that if given any direction to push in then atleast I could have had that but it was mostly mundane survival and repetitive mess ups mixed in with a how not to guide to parenting. So being born as I am rather than into anything that I could have used to my advantage in anyway even just a grand parent who fought in a war who could have inspired me (that didnt die before I could remember them followed by a lack of talking about that person and breif details upon questioning). This leads to the point of I currently feel if I had a role model I would have been following in foot steps however with mine being a immoral cunt I didnt want to and chose a different route which is still to be defined.
6. Knowing that it is possible to change a situation as life is just one big sandbox is hard. when everything is out of your control you can accept that you cant do anything and learn to live with it but when you know there is a potential route to fix everything you just need to figure it out. that just leads to disapointment because you see someones pontial wasted everyday and you realise that in the sandbox of life while you can build things there are forces building and destroying and in the end its all washed away.
7. money is always a issue but it is nothing is is just a means to trade other goods and services. money is fine im just fed up with having it as a focus to why I do or do not do anything and in the end someone can get money and I cant so im not as good instead of me getting it because im better or not getting it because im worse.
8. being told situations wont change is annoying because if situations dont change then whats the point in trying? why even live? its stupid and the sort of thing that makes me want to do something extreme like just randomly make one business fail just determine that I as a person will be the demise of hmmm Coke I will make them shut down, Why would I want this? well just because its been around for so long and made changes itself ill destroy it because it is a everyday thing in the wester world so a background figure will change.
9. the situation that came to mind was year 8 at the time all I was getting from my partents was £2 pocket money a week (while living in a area that cost £5 to get a bus to the closest town). My School kept having non-uniform days for charity and this was the 4th one in this year and being poor this wasnt a good thing due to crapy clothing but additionally each time they expected you to bring in £1 obviously not much to most people but to me that was what small money I had to use, my parents didnt buy me anything other that food and clothes upon requirement so this £2 a week was my ownly way of getting anything else. So due to peer pressure it was expected that everyone pay this toll to the school each time (I did notice some people did not attend on this day) but this time my tutor stated that everyone in my class would pay £2 atleast! because we could all afford it and I know remembering this after so long is a big deal but it was just the point where I decided Im not giving everytime a faceless charity asks instead I want to know why and on principle even if its a dumb penny because why should I give my last penny to a useless cause rather than to a effective one.
10. to link with 9. giving to africa feels ineffective I at points have been guited by such random charities that just say starving children, sorry but that was me and now is still me, I may not go onto TV but at points ive been through trama for no reason other than being born in the wrong place but im drained by these people. Additionally just £1 to me for the last two years could be the difference between dinner or not while £1 for someone earning £100,000 is pathetic so why are they asking for money from public schools in poor areas and running campaigns to raise money where there are people in need, why not in a rich area why am I to feel guilty when I infact am being drained emotionally and financially by others problems additionally my problems are taken less seriously even though these able to help can litterally change my life for my entire life rather than feed me then I get shot a month later for the crops ive grown. this point is due to the fact that you can not see or control the change and there are many reasons and I dont like "donations to africa" when some states are doing this or that and the effect could end as a negative even just down to if you give people something that is of value to steal then they could be killed for it for example build a well, make a area farmable that makes it habitable so then the nearby warlord kills the locals and capitalises on the land. Im not saying this is what happens and it sounds rather ignorant however what im stating is that I have no reason to believe that the help is going to solve the underlying issue for example why are these people in the middle of no where starving?
so a starting list of resons why it sucks to be me:
1. family - mine sucks will need many pages for this one.
2. simply being a minority within a vast majority.
3. actually caring about other people and the world
4. having standards
5. being born
6. understanding that a bad situation doesnt just happen or that things can change
7. money money money always being a issue
8. being told situations will never change
9. being told to give to charities when im a charity case myself
10. feeling morally wrong for giving to generic"africa charities".
the breif of each of these points:
1. my family never did anything serious that directly harmed me and so I was never taken away or helped ever so for that I could argue many people with a worse family would have been better off, basically due to my family I have a distorted world view and have realised that I lived in poverty with no oppertunites for no real reason (this will need further detail).
2. being a minority within a vast majority. I dont know about other people but I am currently 21, white, black hair, blue eyes, average build, live with my partner (who I intend to for the rest of my life and not in a overdramatic childish way its just im someone that couples for life its the way I am) I am a little colour blind (mostly just greens and yellows a little with orange I think) have been told im dyslexic and autistic (had alot of tests), I have no physical problems and never took anything as a dysability I didnt even take extra time for exams. Now however im feeling really disadvantaged because it feels like anyone else who doesnt have family who can assist them can just get some help because they are either female, pregnant, have ADHD or they are black and I understand there are some reasons why people need extra help I just feel some of it is disproportionate and sometimes there are more cracks that i always manage to fall through.
3. I worry sometimes that because I do volounary work and care about other people that I put more effort into helping others when I should really be single minded in helping myself. I also feel that if I were to push all of my effort into making something of myself rather than buying something huge to celebrate after a thing IVE done the likley thing is ill donate it to a charity or just not take the credit and never get anywhere. I sometimes wonder if this is why no one on the top ever really does anything to help, just because you wouldnt stay on top if you had a heart and didnt safegard yourself before others.
4. being in horrible situations then realising that if I didnt keep to my own standards things would be easier. for example being on benifits and them messing up and only having £50 a week for me and my partner while she was studying and I was looking for work and both doing charity work, this meant that after running around trying to actually survive off £50 a week by buying the cheapest thing in each shop and then dealing with the jobcentre I only ever had a small amount of time and energy to actually look for work. I realised later however the whole time we had a number of options that would have fixed the situation, Alcohol or drugs: if either of us were addicted to something we would have got more money, getting pregnant/having a child: if we had a child our benifits situation would have been fixed (we would have got enough to live off then they would have given child benifit ontop). Crime: generally crime would have helped so fraud would have given us money, shoplifting food and the downside? 1. arrested (your given food and a warm place to sleep over night (we didnt have money for heating either)) 2. put in prison (more food, more shelter, no bills, potential job while in prison) 3. after your let out (provided accomedation that has to fit standards, benifits are fixed, helped into work and self employment by organisations such as princes trust as you are no longer a majority you not fit into a minority that is "prejudged"). as you can see it can work to your advantage to be immoral and I so far have not had any good reason to keep doing the moral thing other than its who I am.
* I may turn this into a guide on what to do if your homeless.
5. being born. by this its again back to family I was born into a bad situation and feel that if given any direction to push in then atleast I could have had that but it was mostly mundane survival and repetitive mess ups mixed in with a how not to guide to parenting. So being born as I am rather than into anything that I could have used to my advantage in anyway even just a grand parent who fought in a war who could have inspired me (that didnt die before I could remember them followed by a lack of talking about that person and breif details upon questioning). This leads to the point of I currently feel if I had a role model I would have been following in foot steps however with mine being a immoral cunt I didnt want to and chose a different route which is still to be defined.
6. Knowing that it is possible to change a situation as life is just one big sandbox is hard. when everything is out of your control you can accept that you cant do anything and learn to live with it but when you know there is a potential route to fix everything you just need to figure it out. that just leads to disapointment because you see someones pontial wasted everyday and you realise that in the sandbox of life while you can build things there are forces building and destroying and in the end its all washed away.
7. money is always a issue but it is nothing is is just a means to trade other goods and services. money is fine im just fed up with having it as a focus to why I do or do not do anything and in the end someone can get money and I cant so im not as good instead of me getting it because im better or not getting it because im worse.
8. being told situations wont change is annoying because if situations dont change then whats the point in trying? why even live? its stupid and the sort of thing that makes me want to do something extreme like just randomly make one business fail just determine that I as a person will be the demise of hmmm Coke I will make them shut down, Why would I want this? well just because its been around for so long and made changes itself ill destroy it because it is a everyday thing in the wester world so a background figure will change.
9. the situation that came to mind was year 8 at the time all I was getting from my partents was £2 pocket money a week (while living in a area that cost £5 to get a bus to the closest town). My School kept having non-uniform days for charity and this was the 4th one in this year and being poor this wasnt a good thing due to crapy clothing but additionally each time they expected you to bring in £1 obviously not much to most people but to me that was what small money I had to use, my parents didnt buy me anything other that food and clothes upon requirement so this £2 a week was my ownly way of getting anything else. So due to peer pressure it was expected that everyone pay this toll to the school each time (I did notice some people did not attend on this day) but this time my tutor stated that everyone in my class would pay £2 atleast! because we could all afford it and I know remembering this after so long is a big deal but it was just the point where I decided Im not giving everytime a faceless charity asks instead I want to know why and on principle even if its a dumb penny because why should I give my last penny to a useless cause rather than to a effective one.
10. to link with 9. giving to africa feels ineffective I at points have been guited by such random charities that just say starving children, sorry but that was me and now is still me, I may not go onto TV but at points ive been through trama for no reason other than being born in the wrong place but im drained by these people. Additionally just £1 to me for the last two years could be the difference between dinner or not while £1 for someone earning £100,000 is pathetic so why are they asking for money from public schools in poor areas and running campaigns to raise money where there are people in need, why not in a rich area why am I to feel guilty when I infact am being drained emotionally and financially by others problems additionally my problems are taken less seriously even though these able to help can litterally change my life for my entire life rather than feed me then I get shot a month later for the crops ive grown. this point is due to the fact that you can not see or control the change and there are many reasons and I dont like "donations to africa" when some states are doing this or that and the effect could end as a negative even just down to if you give people something that is of value to steal then they could be killed for it for example build a well, make a area farmable that makes it habitable so then the nearby warlord kills the locals and capitalises on the land. Im not saying this is what happens and it sounds rather ignorant however what im stating is that I have no reason to believe that the help is going to solve the underlying issue for example why are these people in the middle of no where starving?
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