We Don’t Need a Hand Basket, We are in the Express Lane
The Trauma of Living in the United States of America
“I hate what my country has become,” I heard him say. I think I was successful at not rolling my eyes. “It used to be a good Christian country with good morals and principles. People didn’t walk in and steal things in the stores back then.”
I felt bad for the young man in handcuffs that he was spouting off about. It’s not that I’m okay with stealing, it’s that I’m not okay with a lot of the traumatic reasons that lead people to resort to stealing. I hated how everyone could see his shame, and I didn’t automatically assume that he was a deadbeat just because he had been caught shoplifting.
I tend to have a different view on these things having been a person who, out of the trauma that poverty brings, has stolen something. Poverty is a cycle and it indicates deeper problems.
I took great care to say these next words only in my head: okay, boomer. I’m a millennial after all, he thinks my kind are entitled.
“If I see someone stealing diapers, or tampons, or food, I see nothing.” I said.
“So you’re going to enable stealing?” He demanded.
“In those cases, yes, yes I am. Absolutely I am.”
“Stealing is wrong, why are you condoning it?” He asked.
“Sure, stealing is wrong, but so is having no other option becuase our society refuses to pay a living wage, doesn’t want people to have healthcare, doesn’t care much about education…”
It’s not lost on me that the young man stole something from a giant corporation who steals time, money, and healthcare from their employees. They schedule them part-time to avoid offering the “benefit” of insurance, even though healthcare is a right. They have employees do certain tasks off the clock like counting down registers, they steal money by not paying a living wage. Their employees shouldn’t have to be on food stamps to get by.
“What we need is to bring prayer back into schools,” he said “and parents need to be parents instead of trying to be their kid’s friend. Kids have no respect anymore” he said, interrupting me, as if I needed a conservative man to mansplain shit to me. I also didn’t bother to say that part out loud.
“I think it’s great my kids will come and talk to me about anything. I’ve worked hard to build that relationship with them,” I said. “Besides, I come from a country with deep convictions.” I was turning on my snark becuase I couldn’t cope with his shit anymore.
“Really?” He asked. “Where are you from.”
“Oh, I’m from Australia,” I said flippantly.
“I didn’t think Australia was Christian.”
“It’s not, but we were founded as a prison colony. Like I said, deep convictions. They had all been convicted before they were put on the ship.”
Personally I also think it’s disgusting and immoral to build a country off of little boys and girls thrown into prison and then put on a ship, away from their families, for petty crimes.
“There are plenty of places hiring, perhaps they should look for a job,” he said, quickly changing the subject.
“Those jobs treat them with disrespect and don’t pay enough for them to afford food. They also keep them part time so they don’t have to provide an insurance package.”
“You young people these days,” he said “you make excuses for everything.” Would I have been the bitch for pointing out that his generation ruined things for the ones to come after them? Thankfully, he was served and I was the next in line. I’m not even young, I’m very much a middle-aged woman.
I know, because I had many panic attacks about turning thirty-seven back in March. It’s like I woke up one day and realized that this is it, I’m middle aged, where has my life gone and what am I doing with it?
I wanted to broaden his worldview, but I doubt that I did. It seemed like he might have lived a pretty sheltered life. He wasn’t able to bring himself to comprehend the trauma that other people live with. Our society in America is traumatic to live in unless you’re a rich, white, straight, Christian man.
I wanted to ask him if he knew what it was like to climb into a dumpster behind Burger King because he was hungry. I’ve done that. I did it because the burgers were still lukewarm. I would have been arrested if I had been caught, despite the fact that Burger King could not legally sell those burgers.
I’ve dug around in thrift store donation bins and piles looking for clothes, although that, too, is counted as theft. I’ve fucked dirty old men for a twenty. I wouldn’t have been able to sell my body on the street if there weren’t willing customers. It was a jungle, I did what I needed to do to survive.
I’m not homeless anymore, thankfully, but sometimes I still worry about things. Rent, fuel, food, and almost everything else has gone up in price. I’m a disabled single mother and there are many that look down on me in disgust. I know, I shouldn’t have spread my legs, despite the fact that I was married at the time.
I was trafficked into this country to marry a fundamentalist man who needed a wife so he could have sex, because he was trapped in a church that insisted on it. Although I hadn’t lived with my parents for years, preferring to be homeless rather than go back to their constant, severe abuse, my father sold me to him for $2,000.
It wasn’t my ex-husband’s fault, he was lied to and manipulated as much as I was, and he loved me the best he knew how. Ultimately it didn’t work out because neither of us knew how to love to begin with, but we spent many years trying to make it work.
I once stole some cookware so that I could feed my children. The guilt ate at me so bad that it made me sick to my stomach every time I looked at it so I tried to give it away but people didn’t need it. It hadn’t been something I was able to use anyway after all that effort. I donated it to my church so I wouldn’t have to see it but sometimes I wonder if the priest should have blessed it. I’m slowly making my amends but it was so awful.
My children are fed, clothed, educated, and loved. They have everything they need. I came home last week and asked the kids who ate all the applesauce.
“Oh, I gave it to Mr. Willie,” my son said. Mr. Willie lives across the street.
“Mr. Willie came over to ask you for applesauce?” I asked. He’s never come asking for food before, but another of my neighbors does so constantly. He’s hungry.
“No, I took it to him because I thought he might be hungry.” My son responded.
“What made you think he might be hungry?” I asked.
“I think lots of people in this neighborhood are hungry a lot. I don’t think anyone up here has as good a life as we do.” I’ve been very careful to make sure my kids have what they need.
My kids are in the minority, along with the other kids in my neighborhood. They went to school with a main demographic of kids who are growing up in solidly middle class families, the kind whose parents are married, live in the same house, and their moms stay at home while their father works.
None of us mind that at all, but this was the first time my kids had been exposed to it because the main demographic in their previous schools had been kids growing up in poverty. Going to school in a predominatly middle class area showed them a whole new world.
There are times that I don’t eat so that my children can have what they need. I feel incredibly guilty because last week, or the one before that, I bought a package of underwear, because mine were so worn out I was afraid of them tearing completely and falling apart on me while I was in public.
The problem with this isn’t that I’m having to do this to provide, the problem is that a lot of people are in similar situations in what is supposed to be a rich and powerful nation. Yes, I know, if I don’t like it, I can go back home. What people fail to realize is that this is my home now.
My therapist is retiring, my psychiatrist can’t take my insurance anymore, I’m out of toilet paper and staying awake until midnight in hopes that the state decided to pay out the child support on time and in the correct amount. That’s not guaranteed, despite the fact that they set the schedule and the amount. It’s a constant problem, and it’s not like the state gives a damn.
I’m resilient, and I’ve survived many things. Although society doesn’t deem me valuable enough to even be deserving of making enough money to not run out of toilet paper, I keep going.
I keep going out of love for my kids. I’m glad they have what they need.
I keep going out of spite.
I keep going so I can throw both middle fingers in the air at the world.
I keep going because I’ve lived a life of abuse and I survived, and this is my “fuck you” to everyone who tried to destroy me.
