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After reading yet another thread of rants and counter-rants about welfare and those annoying street people with their dirty styrofoam cups I realized that no one was writing from the perspective of true despair.
Seven years ago I was strung out on opiates and booze, I was one of those tiresome people asking for a quarter to catch a bus. Of course I wasn't catching a bus, I was trying to put enough money together for a shortie to ease the shaking. I stole, I lied, I hustled; whatever it took to get what I needed to keep from being sick is what I did. And yet I never did go on welfare.
Why not? Because the whole system is structured to humiliate and confuse people. I couldn't bring myself to sit in a crowded dirty office with the worn-out, strung-out women and the loud kids; I couldn't bring myself to face some hard faced social service worker and ask for help. So I hooked up with a junkie who drove truck to support his habit (and mine, of course) and continued working crap jobs, quitting before I'd get fired, continued befriending old people so that I could steal their pain meds, continued swallowing rubbing alcohol to ease the agony of the shaking.
Welfare is no free ride; you pay with your self-respect, your dignity, your humanity. It's a horrible trap; yet this political notion of "welfare reform" is worse. People who have no hope of being able to truly support themselves and their kids are being squeezed and squeezed and something's gotta give.
I've been sober for six years now and often give a buck to some street person. Not everyone, but even the ones I don't give money to, I look them in the eye and say that I'm sorry that I can't help them today. I came so close to being homeless and abandoned that it's frightening. You who rant about the waste of your hard earned tax dollars need to know that there's damned little between you and them. You also should know that corporate welfare is bleeding you a whole hell of a lot faster and deeper than the old fashioned system did.
In my city, out of town billionaires are being given low and no interest loans, tax abatement deals (which screw an already struggling school system) to "develop" the downtown area. Oh isn't it fine seeing that Rock and Roll Tomb, the baseball park with that stupid logo on it (that the owner of the team regularly is in arrears with his rent), the glorious new football stadium with its recently discovered structural defects, the new hotels and townhouses and restaurants........but go ten minutes in any direction of all this wonder and you'll be in a war zone.
I'm so grateful that when I did hit bottom and asked for help that none of you who look down your noses at the nasty, unwashed bums wasn't around. Only people who have never had to worry about where their next meal was coming from would be so intolerant and dismissive.
As for why don't those jerks just go to the shelter, shower and put on some clean clothes and get jobs........well, I don't know about Chicago, but here the shelters kick everyone out in the morning and while they might provide showers, they sure don't provide laundry facilities. Also the shelters here are dangerous places where the desparate and strong prey on the desparate and weak. It's a terrifying life. I don't want to go back and I sure hope that none of you ever has to experience it.
Count your blessings and try to be a little more generous. Money is a renewable resource.
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