So I was never into the whole blogging thing outside of myspace, but I don't use myspace much at all anymore. So for this and other reasons, I decided to move my bitching sessions to this blogger account.
Within the last year or so, I've become increasingly aware of the American situation - from my point of view, at least. To clarify, I'm 23, female, and somewhere between homeless and the poverty level. I was born in Orange County, California, and have never left the west coast of the states. I went to private school until fourth grade. In fifth grade, I moved to Redding, California and started my journey through public school. I hold firm to the belief that I learned next to nothing in school after fourth grade - a testament to the quality of public schooling. I've spent my years after graduating out of the public school system sampling the choices I have in life - community college (like hell I could afford a university!), getting a job and renting a place to stay, living in vans, squatting, train hopping, living in the forest, pitching tents wherever, making money selling my jewelry on the street, selling jewelry supplies, jewelry I make, and other things on Etsy, Ebay, Zazzle, my own website, and several other smaller sites....the list goes on.
I once had a friend get very frustrated with me because of my constant rewriting of myself and my life.
"Geeze, Rhenn. You can't stop doing this. You'll rewrite yourself, do great for six months, but then, after six months, it's right back to the same despair and shit. When are you ever going to stop this cycle?"
I sure would like to know. I think the worst part about my personal situation - which I have to imagine is in no way unique to me - is that when you're poor or homeless in this country, you don't count. You're invisible in so many ways. Politically, you don't matter. The upper middle class here barely gets a say in things, let alone lower middle class, the poor, the very poor (where I fit in), or the homeless. Sure, we can vote, but the buck stops there. We're just causalities of the system in their eyes. But social invisibility and worthlessness is so much worse. That's where quality of life really gets to you. Oh, I can deal with hunger, I can deal with dressing in a way that I hate, I can deal with doing without, and I can deal with living in "creative" places. But the way you're treated by everyone around you is what really kills you.
An incident that just happened about an hour ago is what prompted me to start this blog. Again, let me lay out my situation. I'm 23, female and live in a car in Redding, Ca. The little bit of income I have comes from the stuff I sell on the internet. Which, right now, is not going well. I've taken down all my sites except Ravekandy.com and my Zazzle store. But I have food stamps, so at least I'm eating - poorly, but I eat. As I already stated, I live in a car. And the place where this car is parked - I don't have a license, and the car doesn't work anyway - doesn't have any internet. So what I do is I go to one of the handful of places in town that is inside and has internet to maintain my stores, and to pretty much wait out the day until the places close and I can go back to the car to sleep. The worst of these places is Barnes and Noble.
Not only are the other people who come to Barnes nasty, but about half of the employees that work here are mean and nasty. I'll state right here for anyone reading this who is from Redding - there are several great employees at this store who are super nice - all the men, actually. But the women who work at the Redding Barnes are for the most part mean and nasty bitches. In particular, Victoria and Marie. Victoria is more of just a bitchy older lady, but Marie is quite possibly the biggest bitch I have ever met. I have never seen an employee that is allowed to treat customers so rudely. She talks to customers like they're bad dogs who are simply in her way, like this bookstore is her prim little house. But back to the situation - as I said, I come here for the internet. I most always buy coffee, and generally try my best to stay out of the way. A few years ago, my friends and I would always sit in the humor section where there was a nice large wall for us to sit and be out of the way. Marie kicked us out of that spot about a year ago. So I don't sit there anymore. For a while, we moved to a tiny alcove in the kid's section. We were "talked to" about sitting there, too. We tried sitting by different book cases, which we were always immediately yelled at for. (Let me note here that these places are still taken every day by other people - sometimes they get yelled at, sometimes not.) We tried several places, and recently, have been sitting on this little bench between the magazines and the world history section. The workers pass us tons of times a day, and say nothing. Today Jason (my boyfriend) and I were sitting here. We sat here yesterday, with the same people working, the same people going by, the same god damned workers who said nothing. So we're sitting there today, reading a couple of books (I'm not even using their internet this time - just reading) and this bitch comes by and tells us that we've been told multiple times that we cant' sit there, because of the carts that will come in and out. I responded by saying ok, but that we were never told as such. She gives me this horrible mocking look and goes "yeah, right." (Blood. Is. Boiling.)
At this point, I'm sure about half of you are just thinking "Just don't go there anymore." But that's the point. It's raining. There's only a choice of four or so places in this town that we can really wait out the day in. We don't have transportation, we don't have money for the bus, we don't have anywhere to go. And as much as I try to stay the hell out of this store, Jason wants to come here sometimes. Cause seriously, Safeway gets old, fast. And some of the people who work there aren't much better.
FreeRice.Com