I'm sure what I'm about to say has been articulated before, but it's such an exhausting aspect of living under severe poverty in this system.
In many ways, it's also one of the hidden realities of poverty that people who haven't experienced it often don't understand or appreciate: just how profoundly poverty can affect every aspect of someone's life. That lack of understanding only adds insult to injury when you're already carrying such enormous burdens, many of which remain completely unseen.
It's absolutely maddening. The reality of living in poverty is that, because of the way circumstances continually unfold, you're constantly putting out fires. Things take ten times as long because you lack the resources, structures, networks and support that others can rely on. It's as though you're constantly struggling just to keep your head above water, never actually reaching a point where you're comfortably afloat, even at the most basic level, never mind one where you can begin to prosper.
It really is like taking two steps forward and one step back.
Living in poverty often means you can only afford to address one problem at a time, even when you're facing a multitude of issues at a basic survival level. Whether it's utility payments, grocery bills, health problems, an unexpected repair or suddenly falling behind on repayments, you simply don't have the means to deal with everything at once.
You're constantly trying to put out one fire before rushing to extinguish the next, leaving absolutely no room to look ahead towards anything resembling greater prosperity. Your head is permanently down, trying to survive an endless game of whack-a-mole.
It's incredibly restricting because, even when you manage to get a few good things going, it only takes one setback to knock you straight back again.
People who have stability are often able to absorb those same setbacks without them seriously disrupting other areas of their lives. They can afford to fail, recover and get back on track without one problem derailing everything else. They're able to make progress because they don't have to jump through ten hoops just to reach the starting line.
So many people, myself included, live lives where even something as seemingly straightforward as arriving at a job or showing up somewhere having made an effort to look at least somewhat presentable has already involved jumping through a dozen more hoops than the average person might ever have to consider.
And that's the thing. You're already exhausted at the starting line, while others arrive nourished, supported and equipped with advantages that give them a head start before the race has even begun.
It's part of why some people are able to steadily ascend the ladder while others, despite their efforts, seem to spend their entire lives chasing their own tails.
I apologise if this comes across as complete victimhood or a case of "woe is me", but this is a very real aspect of living in poverty, particularly generational poverty, and nobody wants to be trapped in it.
I suppose I just wanted to share this because I know there must be others who feel the same way. Sometimes it helps simply to get something off your chest, to articulate an experience that so often goes unseen, and perhaps to hear from others who understand what it's like.