When I was a little kid my mom and I lived with my grandparents, I never questioned it then. We moved out when I was five. We moved back in for a summer while apartment hunting and then moved out again. But then the recession hit. Mom lost her job and because of an arm injury and the ones she was qualified for she could not take. So it was back to a minimum wage retail job. Then back in with the grandparents, now in their basement. I was a teenager so I did not like being yanked and dragged to a different school but it turned out in my favor. Without my grandparents willing to take us in I would have never have gotten into my magnet program, never gotten into American, and certainly would have not been able to dance. But it has also left me in a weird position of being in between social classes. I did not have either middle class or low class raising, but one split between the two. In a lot of ways my life so far has been "classless".

In a lot of ways me and mom living with my grandparents gave me a middle class life. I would go to my dance studio which is one of the most class exclusive things in existence. I got into magnet program and graduated in the top 5%. I learned to play three different instruments in my time at school. I go to a top 100 college which costs $60,000 a year and I have a 3.6 GPA. But, I do not really belong in that middle class category.

When I lived with my grandparents I would come home from dance and my magnet program to live in their basement. When I go home from college I go home to the trailer park. I don't even have wifi when I leave college, then I have friends going home to their car and an in-ground pool. Hell, I do not even know how to load a dishwasher because the apartments me and mom lived never had one. I have lived off of government assistance. I know what financial stress is like. But I have had some many privileges I do not feel like I should call myself low income regardless of what my tax returns show.

So where does that leave me? A sort of endless in between. Feeling distanced from anyone who is not in the working poor since they take things for granted, like home internet or affording a car, which I don't have. While feeling distanced from the low income or working poor because I have so many advantages in life because of my family. I am what I label as "Class-less". I do not really fit into the life experiences of any socioeconomic class. I am in a state of endless discomfort and awkwardness because no one really knows what to make of me. At times it is isolating, at other times when I find another classless person it is bonding. It is also something which I do not think is that unique.

Kids who did grow up in strictly low income communities but come to American feel it when they go back home. People who significantly switch socioeconomic brackets as adults, either up or down, feel it. People who have a significant switch during childhood feel it. A whole group of people who do not fit into what society thinks their life in their socioeconomic status is like, or at least not what it should be like. People who have experiences with multiple socioeconomic lifestyles. People who have been rich and poor, or lived both those lifestyles. We all understand what it is like to be stuck in this in between. We all understand what it is like to be "Class-less".