It’s not coming up roses

In my last post, I shared a lot about my life up to this point and what led me here today, but I didn’t talk about the shadow side of it all. In other words, yes, my life has unfolded rather beautifully, but it hasn’t happened without me getting my ass absolutely handed to me over and over and over and over… Every time you level up, you have to leave an old life, an old you, behind. It’s messy, confusing, depressing, painful. It’s riddled with strife and grief and painstaking decisions. I think that’s why a lot of people stay stuck. The devil you know, right?

At the time of writing this post, I had to apply to Obamacare and Unemployment, and doing so stirred up some ugliness that I want to talk about. I am in good faith asking you to read the entire page, even if it makes you uncomfortable, and even if you disagree with me. I think talking about this stuff is important.

Let me start by saying that as a middle-class cis white woman, I’ve been afforded quite a bit of privilege. Did I ever think I’d have to rely on the government for anything? No. Has that notion been engrained into me as shameful and abhorrent since I was a child? Yes. My parents did not ever say, “People who live on the government should be ashamed.” But our cultural messaging is clear: produce for capitalism or you, a human being, are worthless- nay, you cost society. I find it extremely bizarre that I live in one of the brokest, most uneducated states in the country, where we have the highest rates of government assistance, and many of the people who use the ACA don’t know it’s the same thing as Obamacare. This state has been gutted to bare bones. I mean, most of our schools aren’t even open five days a week anymore. The state itself relies on more government assistance than it produces, and yet, our politicians would still blame the populus. It’s. Not. Working. I digress.

So here I am, traumatized over this job loss, over the moon excited for the next opportunity, and I still need money. I have to pay bills and keep a roof over my head. Guess how much my unemployment check is? $280/week after taxes. Um, are you fucking serious?

Before I go on, I want to be abundantly clear: I am NOT shaming poor people. Being poor is not shameful. In fact, it is true that most people who experience poverty do just that, experience poverty. It usually comes in cycles, and some people move in and out of of this cycle several times in their life. Some experience poverty at times like this where jobs are lost or other life events occur (looking at you, medical debt), and some people are born into poverty and never escape. That said, $280 a week is insulting. A slap in the fucking face. Who on this earth can live on $280/week?! I could puke thinking about it! Imagine if I had debt! Medical bills! Children! It’s SICK. And fun fact: a bill recently passed the MO senate reducing unemployment benefits from 20 weeks to just 8 weeks. I haven’t kept up with it since that update was released, but can you imagine? I’ll be transparent for you: I went from making 100k a year to $280 a week overnight. The job market is a complete nightmare, the economy is actively crashing, and the state of Missouri would like you to have just 8 weeks to bootstrap yourself out of it, while the state itself relies on government aid rather than contributing anything to the national economy. Riddle me that.

I am a privileged, educated white woman. I could be employed again by this afternoon if I wanted to be. Millions of people were not born into my body and privilege. The government assistance websites themselves are janky asf. I can’t even verify my ID online because their camera app doesn’t work, although I spent 30 minutes trying when I’m behind on my work goals for the day. I now have to take myself to an unemployment office- what if I didn’t have a car? What if I didn’t have decent technological skills? What if I didn’t understand the instructions? (I actually didn’t and got denied my first two weeks.) I’m only sorry it took me so long to care about this issue, but as we know, sadly, we rarely care about anything until it impacts us personally.

Here’s the other white-coded piece of the puzzle: shame. Oh, good ole shame. And I say “white-coded” because white people are so damn good at shame. It is our special brand of torture here on Planet Earth. Don’t get me wrong, we need healthy levels of shame to function in a civilization, but I know plenty of people who have gone through what I’m going through, and no one has ever talked to me about it. No one has ever said, “Can you believe this shit?” Or “I’m scared, and I don’t know how I’m going to make this work.” No. They stuff it down or hide it because they’re ashamed, and they rush back into the workforce, and for good reason- very few people actually want to be unemployed, contrary to “No oNe wAntS to WorK anYmoRe!” rhetoric. (As an aside: DUH. Who wants to work????? I think if we all had a choice, we’d be lying in the sun like lizards all day!) Cut the shit. People want meaningful work. No, they don’t want to slave at McDonald’s for $7/hour. No, they don’t want to work for your shitty mechanic shop where you verbally abuse them all day while paying them flat rate, so they only get paid if you have a good reputation and can keep business in the door. Meanwhile, billionaires who literally only make money off our spending and labor continue to get richer and richer, while the middle class continues to deteriorate at break-neck speed. Capitalism is getting a reality check.

Shame drives people to keep all this quiet, follow the rules and get back in line rather than stopping to reflect and maybe say, “UM, WAIT. I DON’T FEEL LIKE BEING TREATED LIKE A DOG???” I can say for certain that millennials do, in fact, treat their dogs better than this. And for middle/upper middle class white people? It’s fine because they’ll just go get another job. They can keep their heads down and keep quiet because this is temporary. Temporary brokeness. Temporary shame to be stuffed away as soon as the next offer from another employer comes along. What about everyone else? Is this making you uncomfortable? It should.

Growth is uncomfortable. Learning new information that disrupts your world view is uncomfortable. Speaking up is uncomfortable. Doing new things is uncomfortable. Getting to the point I’m at now didn’t happen because things just kept rolling out in front of me like a red carpet. Meaningful and tangible personal growth happened because my life and my world view have been disrupted over and over again. I tried the whole shamefully-stuffing-it away-thing for many years, but the problem with that is it kept coming up in different forms. The deep, uncomfortable truths I avoided reared their ugly heads every time I thought I’d finally cracked the code to winning at life. Two steps forward, one step back.

Being in this situation feels like the ultimate test of my values. Nothing and no one dictates my worth, and I viscerally feel that now that there’s literally no money coming my way (yet). It’s been long said that losing everything is how you find out what you’re really made of. I’d hardly say I’ve lost everything, but losing a very comfortable corporate salary after putting in the long years of hard work is truly teaching me where my values actually lie, and it’s not with Corporate America. My value doesn’t come from status, titles, or even a salary anymore. My value comes from who I am as a human being. I am worth having access to healthcare. I am worth a comfortable income that pays my bills and allows me to enjoy my life on Earth while I’m here. Every single human born on this planet deserves this simply because they exist. If you disagree, I fear our values are not aligned, my dear.

I am only in the position to share this perspective with you because of my privilege. I am able to sit in my home office and type this with food in my fridge and the electricity buzzing. I don’t have to take a job I don’t want. I’m not in danger of losing my home or my car or not being able to put food on the table. There are millions of folks out there whose voices you will never hear because they are locked into this violent and barbaric poverty system. Until we abolish these systems of class and privilege, we are bound to continue to repeat these vicious collective cycles. The shame of poverty imprisons us all.

I would call myself a novice when it comes to my depth and breadth of knowledge as it relates to class-conscious and the intersection between this and whiteness. I’m not here to talk about all that regularly. I do my own deconstruction work, and that’s good enough for me. However, I felt obligated to bring it up here today because this is my reality. I am uprooting my shame around my current status, and I see a mirror in society. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s real. Love & Light is great to aspire to, but not acknowledging Fear & Shadow is disingenuous and unrealistic. It is important to my readers to understand that I don’t only operate in the light. I can no longer function while aspects of me are buried or ignored. Will I share every whim and woe that occurs in my daily life? Honey, we don’t have enough hours in a day for that. But I will be honest about large and broader themes that arise for me such as this: fear and shame around poverty.

I’m not asking you to do anything here. You might not have liked what you read. If that’s the case though, ask yourself why? Why does me telling you this truth hit different? You might agree with me fully, in which case, WE RIDE AT DAWN! Either way, I hope to connect again soon for more on this alchemical transformation journey.