Personal Experience

While putting together the Poverty Challenge, the committee that helped organize the event was asked to provide some “first-hand accounts” of living in poverty and homelessness to be put on this blog. The following came to us from a young woman who was at one time a runaway youth and is now grown up and married with children. She recounts her experience with homelessness in this way:

Being hungry can be measured at different levels. I have seen people get close to mealtime and say “I’m starving. I can’t wait to eat.”. Then there is the hungry that I experienced. Starving became a way of life for me , only there was no meal or next meal of the day. While growing up I never went without food. As a runaway, I learned fast that it doesn’t just get put in front of you. While being on the street or finally getting a roof over my head, I had no money to go buy food, no concept of what a food pantry was or that food stamps existed. Very often I went days without food and one time I went a week without it.

What did I eat when I had the chance? Whatever I could. A priest was kind to me one time when I went to him for some money. He gave me $7.00 (about 32 years ago) after I went an entire week with nothing. I can remember buying a $2.00 baloney sub and devouring half of it and saving the other half for an emergency. I had an apartment at 17 years old with no money to really pay for a decent living. I lived off of bread, mayonnaise and ketchup sandwiches. I didn’t have pots and pans to cook out of,or money to buy anything to cook. I finally got a 1.50 cent an hour waitress job at a diner where I also had to wash dishes. That was how I began to eat; hoping that when I had to clean the dishes off that someone left half a sandwich behind. I would wrap it and hide it in my purse and take it home. I stole food sometimes. Other times, I hoped someone I knew would invite me to their home so I could have something to eat.

A month ago I found some teens making fun of an old homeless man. He asked them for some money so he could eat and they made him dance for it while they threw quarters at him and they laughed at him while they did it. I said something about it and made sure the old man had something to eat. I went home and cried afterwards, because the memories flowed back and I knew that could’ve been me. I would’ve danced too.