“When you are poor, the odds are stacked against you from the get-go. People may look at my laundry…”
“When you are poor, the odds are stacked against you from the get-go. People may look at my laundry pile and question why I can’t keep it under control, not understanding that not having daily access to a washer and dryer makes it nearly impossible. I am intelligent and driven, and even so it took me six years to finish a four year degree because I was also working at a minimum wage job and raising a baby and had neither the time nor the money to finish school at the traditional pace. Working and going to school is grueling—even more so when you don’t have a vehicle and it takes you an hour and a half by public transit to get from one place to another. Life is simply exhausting. A trip to the grocery store that would take someone else 45 minutes ends up taking three hours when you have to wait for the bus. It is especially time-consuming when you can only carry a few grocery bags at a time, and you end up having to make this the trip multiple times per week. But it’s not just the logistics of getting around that makes life hard. Its other things—things that I took for granted before I knew what it was like to go without.”
