Confessions: I Hated Being Poor

I just read an article posted by a friend of a friend about the trend of tiny houses and the glorification of poverty or "the simple life." You can read The Troubling Trendiness of Poverty Appropriation
for yourself - it's definitely thought-provoking. It isn't demonizing the practice of minimalism for a reduction in consumerism, but it criticizes the middle class and wealthy, particularly hipsters, of romanticizing and copying behaviors or items they associate with poverty. Pretty sure reusing Mason jars counts. Ditto the obsession with "authentic" dive bars, dumpster diving, and a trend I don't understand where anarchists go on welfare to avoid participating in capitalism (yeah, read the article, I guess people do this, though given how hard it is to go on welfare in Michigan when one actually has no other option, I don't know how they manage).

I read the article introspectively - things were really tight for a while during the Recession while I was underemployed/underpaid/underinsured and Rebecca was in med school, and as members of the LGBT community, we also faced oppression in terms of some of the systems we could have used. Our marriage wasn't recognized, which affected our tax status and my access to her insurance. So as you know, we were on food stamps for a little bit, I calculated the price of food per pound, I worked two jobs with irregular hours, avoided seeing the doctor so I wouldn't have to pay a co-pay or deductible, visited the student food pantry, and rented out our second bedroom to lower housing costs. That's around the time I started playing the remnant game, too.

It wasn't simple. It wasn't easy. It was really, really hard, even with an end date. Some of you remember the story about the second worst day of my life and 72 hour psych holds, which happened in the thick of this. With the benefit of hindsight, of course, I know that we didn't stay broke forever, and that I would mostly get my mental illness managed on much lower amounts of medication than I thought possible, and that someday we would be buying a house, and that having money drastically reduces the likelihood of having to sleep on someone else's floor. At the time, though, it wasn't glamorous.

And in some ways, for us it was a choice for Rebecca to follow her calling (into a career that admittedly hasn't made enough room for people with even slightly limited means, such as her, let alone people who grew up in poverty). She could have remained a despairing pharmaceutical engineer with a high salary and no integrity. We could have lived in a nice suburb, driven nice cars, eaten whatever people eat in that situation. We still had access to credit that helped prevent the worst effects of poverty and the knowledge that it would be over someday, or even that if it came down to it, Rebecca could leave med school (or I could take a position in Asia that paid a significant amount for the teaching of English).

Our poverty was clearly temporary and to some degree, optional, and it was still incredibly difficult. Romanticizing it, and worse, capitalizing on it, is strange. I learned a lot during that time, and I hope I will continue to use my resources well. 

I also hope I will never have to scramble like that again.