As I faced a long trip home from my weekend in Toledo to my home base in Cincinnati I was left alone with that $100 and my sad truth that I hadn't told yet.
The Wednesday before I'd received a letter in the mail - it was one that addressed an issue that I knew was coming, but I didn't realize how soon.
I'd been unemployed for a while. I was doing freelance work here and there and volunteer work, but despite the number of jobs for which I applied and the fair amount of interviews that I went on, I still wasn't finding work. I thought I had found the answer a little more than a month earlier when I started a marketing job that was supposed to turn into steady part-time work, but what I found was that once the month was done and my check was due I was texted twice to tell me not to come in on scheduled days and then the employer refused to answer any of my emails, texts or phone calls. I knew the dark truth was that I would never see the money from that job and I didn't have the means to fight for the pay I was due. It was the same with a freelance job I had completed a few months before where the check that was "in the mail" never seemed to make it.
And here was a letter telling me that my time on unemployment was running out and it gave me some numbers to call to help with job services. Little did I know that that letter was a little late arriving. It seems that the slight uptick in Ohio unemployment was bouncing me from the system early - no more extensions. Where I thought I had two more months and had begun an aggressive search for jobs that included anything and everything, the state had a big surprise for me that weekend. Shortly after midnight as Saturday turned to Sunday, I logged into my account on my mom's computer and found my claim denied - my unemployment had run out the week before - days before I received the letter that it would be "ending soon." I stared at the computer, cried, and then found myself becoming instantly sick. I had rent to pay, a car note and insurance due. I found myself ill and in full-blown panic mode.
By the time I crashed on my mom's sofa at 5 a.m., I had completed many tasks that I never thought I would do. In between sending emails to a few people that I thought might help me find any type of job, I had also applied for federal welfare and food stamps. I, a long-time proponent of the programs for the poor, was now someone that needed them. I never once thought in all the times I voted, argued, or advocated for these programs that I might once need them. I'd never grown up rich, but I also never grew up wanting for anything I really needed either. I always had clothes and shoes that fit, a roof over my head, heat, and food. I went to private schools and was well-educated. I was not the picture of a woman that needed welfare and I didn't know what was going to happen in a few days when my rent was due.
As I drove home though a cloud of anxiety and tears that day with those five $20 bills, I kept thinking about what had happened the past few years. Stuck in a horrible job that I had let overwhelm me, I had then found myself in treatment for depression. I thought when I made the call for help then that I had sunk to the lowest point I could ever imagine myself, but now I knew that wasn't true. After six weeks off of work and intense therapy I came back part-time for exactly one week feeling better and on the road to recovery only to find myself jobless at the end of those five days. With no insurance I had to end my therapy sessions and find a way to cope and finish healing on my own between more prolonged visits with my psychiatrist that I couldn't afford. And even though I applied for jobs and went on interviews during that early stage, the truth was that I was in no shape to really job hunt.
I did my research and followed all the advice of job coaches that I could find after a few months. I began volunteering in my field to keep my resume fresh and to regain some confidence in my skills. I began writing again for me as both therapy and to practice my craft. I freelanced when I could find jobs. And I tirelessly applied for work and went on interviews. And then after advice that I received from many, many "people in the know," I packed my bags and moved to a city where I was more apt to find employment. And what I found was more jobs for which to apply in my field and more interviews offered, but again I kept finding myself to be the one that was not offered the job. I followed up on these, tried to find new leads and advice, but nothing seemed to work for me. And when I applied for jobs outside my sector - even retail ones, I found employers tell me that they wouldn't hire me because they didn't want to spend the time training me when it was clear that I would likely keeping looking for "real" work and leave when I found it. I was at my wit's end with my job search.
And all this time, fighting to make ends meet on the small amount I was receiving from unemployment I drained my meager savings. I trimmed every expense that I could so that my monthly bills only consisted of rent, electric, food, gas, a car payment (that was too large for my new income, but I was stuck since I owed more on it than I would recoup with a sale), and car and rental insurance. I didn't have cable and my internet access was included in my rent. I had sat in a psych ward at University Hospital for more than eight hours so that I could get a plan to discontinue my medication for depression because the county advised me it was the only way I could get fast and free health services because they couldn't refuse me service and I could default on the bill. And I, who loved to shop, hadn't bought one piece of clothing in more than a year. And despite all my money woes, I was lucky, because I didn't go into my unemployment with any credit card debt.
And yet, no matter what I had done right or wrong, I was still here, driving in my car that day knowing that the five $20 bills my mother just handed me and $78.74 in my checking account were the only money I had left to my name.
I finally broke a few days later and through an avalanche of tears told my mom that I had no money for my rent. She drew from her savings that were supposed to help in her retirement to help me.
A week later when I went for my appointment at Hamilton County Job & Family Services I had $10 left after paying for food and other bills. I had no idea where I would find the money to make my car payment in a few weeks or my rent the following month. I paid $6 to park in the cheapest lot I could find after trying to find a meter within a mile of the building with no luck. I walked into the building now with $4 left to my name.
As I stood in the office and surveyed the scene around me, I kept wondering how I was here. In the crowded lobby, I was in the midst of a few people there that some would label "welfare queens," but there were far more people there that would surprise most. I wasn't the only person there in that lobby that I felt looked "out of place." For the few that didn't look embarrassed to be there, for the few that seemed to feel they were "entitled," there were ten times more people that just looked like me - desperate, sad, embarrassed, and wanting to be anywhere else if they could be.
When I arrived for my 9:30 a.m. appointment, the overworked, overextended office that was also the victim of state and federal budget cuts for staff was already more than an hour behind. In the end, I would be called by my case worker at 11:45 a.m. And during that time I had more than enough time to look at all the people that came and went that didn't want to be where they were. Most were people that I was assuming were like me, down on their luck after having worked many years. In fact in April I had just payed my taxes - a whopping 35 percent since I had not one exemption - no earned income, no children, no home, and no interest to deduct. I had paid taxes since I was 16 years old. Never once had I complained until this past April when the burden of those taxes stripped me of the last of my savings plus a few dollars of my mom's.
And as I waited in that office, I did pass some of the time on my "fancy" cell phone - like that urban myth welfare mom that everyone always claims they see in the grocery store with the iphone and Coach bag - it was on a cell phone that my mom had paid the bill for the year as my Christmas present the year before. It was also my only phone and the only number I could give the employer I was hoping to find. On my shoulder was a Vera Bradley bag, not a Coach, but still a nice bag that I received the year before as a birthday present. And, I suppose if needed I could sell it for groceries for a week, but it was hardly a solution to my long-term needs.
When my number was finally called I was greeted by a very kind social worker. She pulled up my case on the computer in front of her and began telling me that I qualified for food stamps and Medicaid part B (which only covers birth control and no other healthcare). And, because I was single and had no children, that was it. No other welfare is available in the state of Ohio. So, I could eat, but that was about it. So, yet again, as I cried and asked questions, exhibiting my ignorance about the welfare system that I always assumed existed, I found out there was no safety net for me.
I left the office that day with a nine-page document of charities and organizations to call for help. I went home and worked my way through page after page. This program no longer had money, I lived in the wrong zip code, wrong zip code again, I could only get food assistance because I didn't have children ... on and on the rejection continued and continued from each and every one of the programs listed.
And what I found was the reason that welfare and other programs that help and aid the poor and disadvantaged shouldn't be left to the private sector, because your zip code shouldn't be the deciding factor in who gets help. And for every person that I've heard that has said they believe there should be some safety net, but talks about abuse in the system, I'm pretty sure that I would be one of the people that they would want to help. Down on my luck, I had worked and paid taxes for years. In high school I worked. During college I worked two jobs, took a full-time course load and graduated in four years. And for 12 years I had worked a second job in addition to my full-time one. I wasn't a person that was lazy, entitled or afraid of work - I was the definition of a person that had been down on her luck and just needed aid and a break. If in that welfare office she had told me to get to work here's a job, I would have gladly earned that food money they would load on my EBT card rather than have to take it.
As I called the last organization listed - the United Way, I was told that the only organization that would help where I lived would be the Saint Vincent de Paul Society at the local Catholic Church and the Salvation Army. When I called Salvation Army, they referred me to Saint Vincent de Paul as the only help for my zip code. When I asked them if there were any resources for someone "nonreligious" I was told no. It wasn't that I was uncomfortable with the Catholic Church, but I was just curious if there was anything for single, non-religious citizens in the country that prides itself on the separation of church and state. I had to leave a message for them and was called back a few days later by a male representative that wanted to come to my home and talk. As a single woman I was just too uncomfortable to let that happen without investigating. I later found out that the help they would offer would be in the range of $100 - hardly the amount that would help me make rent. And during one more desperation call to an organization that wasn't for my zip code that I'd skipped, the very kind social worker advised that I should start knocking on every church door I could and beg.
What did happen was that my mom found a way to pay my rent for one more month and one of the few friends I confessed my hardship to made me a loan that I was to pay forward once I was back to work that paid my car for one more month. And then in what might be the greatest act of charity I've ever received, my volunteer job offered me a permanent one (for which I'll always be thankful and always left wondering if it was because of the financial wreck I was facing).
It was only two months that I lived on this edge, but it was enough.
Only once when I shopped for groceries did I not watch the cashier at the register morph before my eyes from friendly to something much less when they saw EBT in the tender line.
I watched memes, stories, and rants appear in my facebook news feed talking about welfare, entitlements, cell phones, and Coach purses - essentially complaining about people like me.
I felt so ashamed and humiliated and through it all, all I really wanted was a job and my dignity. I didn't want to be the person that had to take those five $20 bills or that paypal donation from my angel friend. I didn't want to be the person that had pay for food with an EBT card. And I didn't want to be a person that had to explain to anyone I heard talking about how there were programs to help "those kind of people" that knock on church doors or stand on street corners with "will work for food" signs, that sometimes there aren't programs when you end up penniless in the wrong zip code.
Now, more than ever, I know what I always believed - that almost anyone can find themselves in circumstances they never anticipated and that I want to live in a world where we help and protect the people that do. And if in the process someone cheats the system, I'm okay with that, not because it's right, but because for everyone of those people that feels "entitled" or really is "lazy," there are so many more that are just looking for a hand-up.
As the wise man, Ghandi once said, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." And, I for one want to live in this great kind of nation. I want to know that the next time a single woman that lives near me finds herself dealt a bad hand that she has a way to survive. I don't want to be the one that tells her that just because she rented in what was once the right place that she now has to suffer because it's the wrong place to find help.
Jen you constantly and consistently amaze and impress me. Thank you, once again, for sharing.
ReplyDelete-Julie Quinn
Thank you so much, Julie. Your pretty amazing and impressive yourself :)
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