Ever since I was 12 years old, I had heard the debate of the "system abusers" versus the taxpayers. I’ve also sat in on many conversations with my peers that absolutely despised people that lived off of welfare. Every person noted, “there’s a difference between people who need help and people who abuse the system,” and when I’d say that I lived on welfare, the reply was always, “you’re different.”

But I wasn’t different at all.

My entire family lived on welfare. In a sense, they were the very system abusers that people hated. My mother worked a little and my father didn’t work at all and by the time I was in high school, I had to work a part time job to make sure that I had all of the things that I needed. So while my friends were screaming, “take away welfare,” they were also saying, “it’s okay because you’re different.” Different or not, whether I worked while my father received an unemployment check, my mouth was still fed by the system that my family took advantage of. But this isn’t a political piece. I’m not here to tell you what you should believe about welfare.

What I am going to say is this: I’m thankful that I was poor.

What? Yes. I am THANKFUL that I was "poor."

When I was 12, I envied and even despised my friends that had everything that I didn’t. But by the time I was in high school, I realized that I couldn’t hate people because they were given better opportunities that I was. What I could do was take my circumstances and try to be just as good, if not better, than they were. What I could do, was be the best that I could possibly be. And that’s where so many kids like me go wrong. They think that what they're given is what they’ll be, where they can go, and that’s their life. And from someone that’s been told that it’s my fault—it’s never anyone's fault.

I would never want to blame someone for having less opportunity, it's just not fair. It’s not even their fault that they don’t believe in themselves because it must be so hard to have no one else that does. For myself, I did have people that believed—a lot of them actually. The people that drove me home from work and basketball practice, the people the paid my schools fees and bought my yearbooks, the people that looked in my face and said that they believed. And I know sometimes that those were the same people that believed in me but not in welfare, sometimes forgetting that the two went hand in hand.

But I’m still thankful. I’m thankful that I was poor, that I "lived below the standard of living" because I don’t think I’d be the same if I didn’t have to work as hard as I did for everything that I wanted. I don’t think I’d know how to appreciate food, money, or clothes as much as I do now because I know that those things aren’t always given. I’m thankful that I was poor, that where I was lacking in material items, I was never poor in love. There was never a lack of people that stood behind me. In a sense, I was never really poor, because how can someone that is given so much love be lacking anything?

I’m thankful that I was poor—but I’m so thankful that I really wasn’t.