“You’re nothing but a filthy dole bludging, fucking greenie! Look at you, YOU ARE NOTHING! Why don’t you get off your arse and get a fucking job? Fucking dole bludging greenie cunt!”
I denied the furious accusation as it was flung at me in disgust, I denied it loudly and strongly, I yelled back, “I have never been unemployed in my life, NOT EVER.”
But it didn’t matter. My husband was unemployed and so I was nothing but a filthy dole bludger as well. A pariah by proxy. The fact that I had chosen to be a stay at home mum didn’t matter, nothing mattered. The pillar of the community who had abused me at a party was right, we were unemployed, so we were nothing.
It was hard to take and even now I am loathe to talk about our time on the dole because poverty leaves a scar across your soul.
It is a precarious balancing act. A tightrope act with hunger on one side, cold on the other and disdain and derision all around you. If you can just keep inching along the wire juggling the budget furiously you might be right for this week, but it only takes one small thing, one unforseen circumstance to knock you off the wire and explode the budget. And there you are, cold or hungry or telling the kids in a jolly voice that we are going to play indoor camping because the power was cut off on a Friday afternoon and all you can see ahead is a long, long weekend of darkness.
I remember once being home alone with a babe in arms as they were about to cut my power off. Back then, before the introduction of pay as you go meters, it was always cut off on a Friday afternoon. A barbaric time of the week to be disconnected. The hydro truck pulled up on the road outside and started fiddling with this long pole thing. I went cold because I knew we were about to be disconnected because I had forgotten the bloody bill again. I raced up there to see what he was doing, to see if I could convince him to “forget” to cut the power off, but if this bloke could have spat on me he would have. He looked at me like I was shit, and I knew that he would be boasting down the pub later on about cutting the power off on a damn greeny.
It is a precarious balancing act that I had mostly forgotten about, as with just The Spouse and I at home these days, finances are not as tight as they used to be.
But sometimes something will happen and bang, I am right back where I was ten years ago and I do not like it. I do not like it at all.
Recently, I took my son to see a psychiatrist, the consultation fee was $320 with a $220 rebate. I would have found and paid much, much more as at the time David needed to see a psychiatrist very badly.
We are so lucky here in Australia, that for someone like me who does not have medical insurance, I have the safety net of medicare. At the end of the consultation I paid the bill, knowing that the rebate would be deposited in my bank account that night.
Except it wasn’t.
It wasn’t in my bank the next day, or the next.
I rang medicare and discovered that because David is legally an adult now, that he was the claimant and as his bank account wasn’t linked, a cheque would be mailed out to him in the next eight weeks. The woman on the phone was brusque and officious and extremely unhelpful and her attitude was like an icy cold bucket of poverty had been tipped over my head. It wasn’t so much the fact that the money I had been counting on wasn’t credited to my account it was the woman’s attitude on the phone, she spoke to me like I was unimportant and stupid. This attitude of hers was enough to make me teary all day because (in hindsight) I think I was having some sort of flashback to the dark days when everything really was a struggle.
Because internet, they really were dark days and I was surprised by how little it took to make the memories of poverty come flooding back. I know that we are lucky here in Australia and my children were never starving, but they were shunned and derided for wearing second hand clothes and the wrong shoes. The abuse I described in the opening paragraph of this post was more commonplace than I care to remember.
We treat our most vulnerable members of society terribly here in Australia.
If I forget to pay a bill, these days it is because I am an artist and obviously am absentminded because ART
If I forgot to pay a bill ten years ago it was because I was irresponsible and careless and worthless because UNEMPLOYED
The three lowest groups in Australia are, the unemployed, the indigenous and the refugees.
The divide is getting broader and as money is funneled away from grass roots programmes in our most impoverished suburbs I can see a dark future ahead.
I have lost my thread but I know I am angry, I am angry that the woman on the phone made me feel worthless. I am angry about where my country is headed. I am angry that in a country that has so much there are still so many people that have nothing.
So now I will go up to the studio and fire these cups of shame that I decorated yesterday, I will think dark thoughts and I will brood on ALL the injustices in the world. And the clay will soothe me and I will remember that all life hangs by a thread, not just mine and I will not be angry anymore.
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Oh Kim. Hugs.
I remember that shame so well. And still rage at the injustice in our world – here and abroad.
I thought the shame had vanished EC, I thought it had gone. But no it is just there, under the surface. A lot of the time when I get annoyed by very privileged people bleating about “poverty” and publicly wailing on twitter or FB with an “Oh, won’t someone do something” I think I should write something but then I find that I really can’t be bothered picking the emotional scabs. Maybe that reluctance is changing, maybe with this post I might write some more. I don’t know. Thank you for the feeling of solidarity and the hug 🙂
I am constantly shocked by humans & their judgmental attitudes …… & so precious to read your thoughts & emotions…. it’s so not fair those fuqers can (nearly) ruin our whole day ….. thank the Goddess for being able to cope via studio !!!!X
Thank you lovely. x
Yet again, your writing really touches me. You have a way of putting things that make me feel like I am watching a movie of your words – I feel part of it. I am sorry you had such dark times, and even sorrier that I didn’t notice or know. We all get so caught up in our own little world and worries (real or imagined) that it takes effort to look out for others or see things from their point of view.
You are truly an artist – and not just with “mud”, but words too.
xx
We were both busy Helena and in a friendship that spans 35 years there are bits that we both missed. The important thing for me, with my friendship with you is, a: that you are still here with me and b: that we manage to pick up exactly where we left off after an absence of ten years or ten minutes 🙂
Also thank you for the wonderful compliment about my writing I read bits of that out loud to Veronica.
Thanks so much for sharing this, Kim. I’ve been struggling to make ends meet for the last six years because of chronic illness. I’m so lucky that I’ve had my poor parents to fall back on if stuck. Now my poor partner is holding up the financial fort after my health dipped down once again and I’ve been earning on average 50 bucks a week since mid-year. I can’t imagine what that would have been like with children; my heart goes out to ya. And what the fuck? How someone could speak to you like that I dunno. As if it’s shameful being poor.
I finally went for the disability support pension a few weeks ago. Took me six months to get the paperwork together. They wanted documentary and photographic evidence of the inside of my guts. The assessing GP sympathized, saying “They make it hard, don’t they,” which was nice, and yet nevertheless it still felt vulnerable talking about my personal health with a stranger who spent his entire interview time staring at his computer screen while asking questions. Yep, I felt like a loser, like I was only 305-305-986V, drain on resources.
Fuck this shit – we are better than this!
The Spouse was encouraged to apply for the disability because of his pain issues, back then we didn’t have a clue about the Ehlers Danlos, we just thought that he was in so much pain because of various motorcycle and other accidents. It took three years for The Spouse’s application to be accepted and his medical file ended up being a couple of inches thick. So yes, empathy for your experience Sue, I have it. <3
Whenever I hear that “I’m better than you and don’t you forget it” tone from anybody, I always (for a moment) hope that one day something will happen to them so that they know what it is like. Not nice of me, but it’s a very brief thought and I immediately tell myself I wouldn’t wish that sort of circumstance on anyone. Still, the first thought did cross my mind.
I remember feeling awful every payday as a child when my dad would hand me a pound note to go around to the local shop and pay ten shillings off “the book”, then buy bread, cheese and sugar and a packet of cigarettes for him with the other ten shillings. Then for a couple of days we’d pay for what we bought until the money ran out, then we’d buy “on the book” again. I don’t believe that “book” account ever did get paid off.
Later in the first few months of marriage, our car was repossessed, because hubby had a “later” attitude to bill paying. That was when I started always putting aside a few dollars a week for things like electricity, gas. and keeping a notebook with big reminders to pay the bill as soon as it came in. I had to be careful hubby never, ever found the envelopes with the money. He would have thought it was “spare money” and spent it.
I understand that secret bad karma wish River 🙂 Thank you for sharing your story with me. LOVE
I get this, all too well. We’re both on benefits, very blessed to be doing more comfortably than some due to owning our own home, but we still definitely feel the sting of judgement, of being perceived as ‘bludgers’. We try not to let it get us down, some days we succeed, others not.
Yes, I understand this. It also feeds into what Veronica was writing about over at Ramp Up, that attitude of you are disabled so you shouldn’t have children. Or you are receiving benefits so you need to be accountable to all upstanding members of society.
I really loved her piece at Ramp Up, it was great.
Oh god, I felt sick reading this and you have lived it. Only this morning I ranted at someone behaving brattishly about their oblivion to how incredibly fortunate they are. We store every experience just under our skin – only just. Love xxx
“We store every experience just under our skin”
Yes, yes we do, that is a beautiful way of putting it Jebaru xx
Don’t you dare let them shame you. Fuckers. Let me at them.
Oh you are a fierce friend Alison 🙂
Yikes! I am unemployed now, and I’m a greeny at heart, but haven’t been yelled at … yet. How totally rude of them. I know the feeling of shame, and don’t often tell folks that I’m unemployed. Our splintered system of politics encourages mean behavior here, too. Kim, you defy the stereotypes and you have so many talents that you will never be unproductive… and your family is like you. I hope David is feeling better.
Never easy being poor. I’ve driven taxis when my partner struggled to finish postgraduate studies. The despair of dropping off the taxi in the rain at 4 AM and finding someone has stolen your old motorcycle. And it’s 20 kilometres to home. Fun times.
That said, the person answering the phone at Medicare was probably only a step away from unemployment themselves. The take out is that it’s always people, not ‘the system’.
I too,lived in poverty as a child. 2 children with a single mother on a widows pension. I was the child who had the wrong clothes and shoes and I know what it’s like to be hungry. I totally get it. It leaves scars,long,painful ones.