You Don’t Climb Out of the Well and Pull Up the Ladder

When I was a child, my family was on food stamps. After my parents split up, my mom worked multiples jobs trying to support a family of 4 as a single mother. She worked hard to provide a good life for us and keep her children fed—as any good mother would do. I can tell you that she wasn’t lazy. She was a fighter. But at the end of the day, she couldn’t do it on her own.

We were that family that received help from the government programs designed to help people in need. We were that family that received help from the community and the local church. One year, for Christmas, a group of people came to our house bearing bags of groceries and Christmas gifts for under the tree. And while we stood in the kitchen holding hands, my mother broke down in tears.

I didn’t grow up in a wealthy family. My parents did their best. But we shopped for clothes at secondhand stores and paid for food with literal pieces of paper that were essentially coupons. We ate modestly and lived a simple life. Then, one day, we didn’t “need” the help anymore. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have used it because the poverty line is thin.

There was one other time I relied on food stamps in my life. When I was in my early 20’s, I was supporting myself through college. I lived off campus in a townhouse with 4, sometimes 5 roommates. I worked part-time because that’s all I had time for with my demanding schedule. And with my service industry wages, there were plenty of days when I had to decide between putting gas in my car or buying groceries.

Living in LA wasn’t cheap, even back then. And I didn’t have the luxury of a trust fund or asking my parents for money. That’s not to say they didn’t help me out with the occasional phone bill or other modern necessities. But it wasn’t a lot, and it wasn’t often.

As someone who went through the process of applying for and receiving EBT, I can tell you that it’s not like they’re just handing out cash like lollipops and stickers at a doctor’s office. You have to prove that you’re working and what your income is. If you’re not working, you have to prove that you’re actively searching for work and applying for jobs you qualify for. And you have to do this in regular intervals, on time, or else you lose your benefits in an instant.

When I finally stopped qualifying for food assistance, it was because I was working 2 jobs. As a college-educated adult, I still had to work 2 jobs. There were even times I worked 3. Do you know what it’s like to work 3 jobs? The lack of time you have to yourself to relax or eat or sleep. The feeling of exhaustion after working from 4am to 12am. Basic needs become a luxury.

I can’t tell you the number of times I would get excited when I realized I had 24 straight hours off from work because I got off one day at noon and didn’t have to be back until the same time the following day. I’m telling you this because I think there are some people who need to hear it.

There are sadly so many people in the world, or maybe just the U.S., who simply do not get it. They’ve never had to struggle to put food on the table. Maybe they had to live frugally for a time, but never to an extreme. They’ve never had to decide between keeping the power on or making sure their children were fed. They’ve never worked 3 jobs just to keep afloat. And those are the ones telling SNAP recipients that they’re lazy or they’re scamming the system or to just “pull yourself up by your bootstraps like I did”.

I have been pulling myself up by my bootstraps my entire fucking life and I am tired. I’m tired of living in a country that doesn’t value all its’ people, just the lucky few. I’m tired of working my ass off to barely make ends meet. I’m tired of companies who refuse to pay a living wage when their CEO’s make 6000x the amount of their lowest paid employee. Seriously, who needs that much money?!

And I’m tired of hearing the baffling amount of ignorance and hypocrisy from all the Trump supporters who are so…I was trying really hard to say this kindly but literally can’t that’s how tired I am…all of the Trump supporters with their heads so far up their asses they literally can’t even see how privileged they must be to live in their comfortable little bubble of lies and apathy.

At the end of the day, we’re no longer at a point where it’s Democrat vs Republican. We are at a point where if you’re still on the Trump train, just riding past all of the trauma-inducing, divisive, condescending hypocrisy, then you need to get the fuck off at the next stop. Otherwise, things are never going to get better in this country. The president is allowing SNAP benefits to go away November 1st and is blaming the Democratic party instead of his own failure to lead. Children are going to starve and instead of trying to negotiate with Congress and re-open the government, he’s building a ballroom.

There are so many ways this could all be prevented, but now it’s up to us. You don’t climb out of the well and then pull up the ladder. You give others the chance to climb out too.

If you’re facing food insecurity in New York’s Capital Region and need access to resources, or if you have the means to donate to those in need, please visit https://thefoodpantries.org/