I knew what the word bankruptcy meant by the time I was eight, about six years after my family had filed for the first time. About five years later we filed again because of thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills. My family had very poor immune systems, as people with little money seemed to all have. My dad has slipped a disk in his back and the doctor messed up the surgery which made him have permanent nerve damage, we didn’t have the money to sue obviously, then no one would give him pain medicine, which was made worse by the fact that he works with mentally disabled men and has to lift them sometimes. My mom has fibromyalgia and arthritis and she also doesn’t get medicine but the many doctors telling her to go to pain management therapy adds up. Also in that time my brother broke is ankle so badly he needed a pin in it and I broke my leg in three places and needed surgery. A month after I got my cast off, I broke it again. Constant x-rays and casts cost more than you think. Then there was the sinus infections, dentist trips, and strep throats that we all seemed to get at least three times a year. I knew that bankruptcy took away your bills but destroyed your credit, which has become so bad we can never get anything that needs credit.

I was 10 when I found out that not everyone lived the way my family and I did. I really thought that everyone ate tomato soup and turkey bacon three to four times week for lunch. I didn’t think living in a trailer park was a bad thing or that getting all my clothes from Goodwill or San Sauci was embarrassing. I had always grown up going to Love Chapel and memorizing how much of each food we were allowed to get and knowing that when I turned 12 we were no longer allowed to get milk from them. I also knew that the Trustee’s had to know how you spent all your money so that way they could give you assistance. I knew when our food stamps renewed and when my parents got paid. I knew by my mom’s face looking at the check book whether we would be okay that month or not. I knew so much about the bills that my dad had to make a rule that my mom was no longer allowed to tell me about what we owed because I was always very worried.

As I got older, I found out how others saw me because I was poor and how some never wanted to help people like my family. When I got to

high school, there were more things parents were expected to buy for their kids: fundraising cookie dough, increasingly expensive books, field trips, and formal dresses. As these things came up I got more and more used to saying I might not go or I need to see if I can get a scholarship which involved telling almost all of my teachers just how little money my family makes. Any trip I went on had to be funded by the school and my formal dress, nails, hair, and makeup were all paid for by my best friend’s family who knew I couldn’t go unless someone helped me. I was grateful for the help I got from so many different places but I soon found out some people don’t like being associated with poor people. Or have their daughters associated with them. There was one girl who stopped being my friend because of this

That’s what being my kind of poor is. It’s not children with bloated bellies or scraggly homeless men holding up signs. It’s having barely enough for food and rent. It’s eating Saltines for dinner and having your electricity turned off sometimes. It’s being looked down on because you can’t buy name brand clothes. It’s being terrified everyone will know just how small your house is or how many times your mom has to write checks to cover other checks. It's being scared to post this article but hoping people learn to understand people like me.