I Should Just Decide To Stop Being Poor
Since I can't, I'll just pray that fucking Serenity Prayer I love to hate so much
Yesterday, as people around me wheeled gigantic flat screen TV’s that seemed to be the size of my living room walls towards the front of my local Walmart, I was just trying to navigate to the back to get two quarts of oil and a funnel for my car. I was crying because I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to use my car at all until it was fixed, and I certainly don’t have the $600 it will cost to fix it.
Unfortunately I am in an area that does not have public transport and I’m not close enough to anything to walk (even if I wasn’t disabled) and so I actually need a car. I’d love to be in a place where owning a car wasn’t a necessity, but that’s not my current reality and so for now, I have to get my car up and running.
I love my car, it’s a 2002 Toyota Avalon and it’s a great car. It is, however, old. That doesn’t bother me it just means it needs some work done. I was crying while trying to get to the oil, not only because I was overwhelmed with the amount of people that were in Walmart, but because I knew I didn’t have the funds to fix the car and I was there just so that I could get some oil and go home.
The reason I was so upset was far more complex. Not being able to use my car is very triggering to me and it affects my mental health. I am so afraid that I won’t be able to get into my car and escape if I need to. Intellectually I know that I do not have to escape right now, but the trigger doesn’t care. I couldn’t do it if I needed to and that’s enough to frighten me.
I also can’t get to Walmart for groceries or anything else when the car doesn’t work. I’ve just started to fit in well at my new church (which I didn’t think was possible) and I’ve been able to go to some things like Bible study on Wednesday nights and not feel as profoundly lonely as I was used to. If I can’t get to those things and to church, I will feel alone again.
That’s not even all. I was angry because I’m always broke, unable to make very much money either on here or anywhere else. The cost of living is about to go up after the results of the presidential election, and I’m worried about how I am going to make it next year because things are already hard now. So you can imagine how incredibly upset I was to potentially have to miss and event tomorrow morning where I actually had the chance to make some money.
Sometimes it feels like the universe hates me so fucking much I’m not even allowed to make money, even when I have crafted things with my own hands to sell. I have Rosaries, prayer beads, and my books to sell. I have the potential to make a few hundred dollars, enough to fix the car. I don’t really expect to make that much because these kinds of things are hit and miss, but I at least have the opportunity. The space is reserved and the things are made. I’m praying, and acting as if I’m going to be there.
I often feel like I’m not allowed to get ahead in life because of whatever circumstances at the time are causing me to lose money. I was asked by my kid’s father why I don’t just put five or ten bucks aside every month into an envelope for such times. It’s as if he thinks I’m stupid and didn’t think to do that when in reality it’s because I don’t have anything left at the end of the month.
People have lots of advice for how I can stop being poor and they get kind of pissy when I don’t try it, mostly because I have tried it before, or because it’s impossible. I’ve tried so many things, and I often half-joke about starting an OnlyFans and going back to sex work, and while I have no intention of doing that, deep down I’m telling myself that I have no worth and that sex work is the only thing I will ever be able to make money from.
I have been working through these things and so this feels like an insurmountable obstacle and while it isn’t, it’s hard because I don’t know how things are going to go. I’ve been praying a lot about the situation, in a way that I don’t usually do. I mean sure I pray about things, but I don’t usually have a particular request like “help me be able to make it to the Holiday Market to sell my stuff,” or “help me get the car fixed” because God isn’t a lucky charm and so I don’t often feel right praying that way.
That’s not to say I don’t pray, because I pray a whole hell of a lot. I just don’t pray that way. This weekend I’ve been doing it, though because there’s so much tied up in this for me. I’ve been praying and also calling on Our Lady of Fatima, asking for her help and intercession. I am not really expecting any one way of those prayers being answered because I’ve learned that God often answers them in ways I don’t expect. I just need to trust that he’s got this situation under control.
Part of the Serenity Prayer that is used in 12 step recovery is “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” and that’s what I have to do here because I really don’t have many options. What I can do is pray that God will take care of this, and still prepare all my items for the event with the expectation of going.
There’s so many layers here, and I don’t think prayer will fix everything but I know that for me, sometimes it’s all I have. I’m stressing about the car, bills, and about what I will do if things go to hell next year after Trump takes office seeing as people want all the undocumented immigrants gone, voted for more tarrifs, and are excited to have a professional mobster back in office.
Conservatives and independents lied their fucking asses off to me before the election, saying that if Trump won, things would be better financially. They seemed to think I was actually dumb enough to believe their lies. Of course they also tried to tell me that Project 2025 wasn’t a list of things they were planning to implement, it was just a think tank. What is more insulting than being lied to is being lied to with lies so obvious and the person lying to me thinks I’m actually stupid enough to believe them. It shows how little they think of me as a person.
This is another thing where I think about the words in the Serenity Prayer, where I ask for “the courage to change the things I can,” like stop associating with people who blatantly lie to me and actually expect me to go along with it. I can’t change the fact that Trump was elected, or even how my world will likely change, but I can choose not to let liars have unrestricted access to my time, energy, and friendship.
I’m not cutting them out of my life, the key word there is “unresticted” access, but I’m choosing to limit my availability somewhat. Some of that means shifting people from the “friends” compartment to the “acquaintances” part. I don’t tolerate this kind of nonsense very well at all, and considering the fact that I am working hard on my healing, I need to conserve energy for that.
I can’t trust people who deliberately lie to me anyway, and so while I know them, and will be here for them when this shit affects them too, I don’t have to put up with their shit and honesty is so important to me when considering friendships. This means loving them with more distance between us than there used to be, it respects my dignity and humanity as well as theirs.
They are people that I can’t be friends with, but I’m also not enemies with. I don’t mind seeing them, I will have a conversation with them if we are in the same place at the same time, or even catch up with some things in their lives. It just means I won’t be BFF’s with them. These boundaries are the things I need the courage to change.
It’s a matter of having the wisdom to know the difference. Or, as some people like to insinuate, I could just choose to stop being poor. I can’t just pull myself up by the bootstraps, because I don’t own any to begin with, and that’s what many people just don’t understand.
Since I can’t simply stop being poor, I just need to keep figuring out what to do next. I have a friend I love dearly who is quite happy to tell me to do the next right thing even though I hate it when she does that. She does not give a damn if I like it or not, she says it anyway because it sometimes needs to be said.
As you can see, this recovery business has kind of taken over how I think things through in my life, and I think that it’s why I've been sober for almost a year now, and that’s worth celebrating even when everything really fucking sucks.
I love this song…