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Celebrating Survival
Anti-Privilege meme.
Yeah, I'm a little bitter. Doing that meme made me realize how much it takes some people to feel they're in the privileged category.
The meme is yes, a measure of privilege.
So here's the other side of the coin.
I only had myself to base this thing on, and the few things I've heard from other people that I can think of at the moment.
Feel free to steal it and add to it. Celebrate the strength it takes to survive.
I knew nobody but me would pay for my college
I’ve known the joy of a welfare Christmas
Someone besides my parents were the main providers of most non-necessary items
I thought Santa Claus hated me (or I was real bad), based on the gifts you got
I didn’t have the normal climate control for where I lived (A/C in the south, Heat in the north)
I didn’t have cable TV
I saw at least one of my parents use drugs
I saw at least one of my parents buy or sell drugs
My parents used food stamps to put food on the table
I remember living for more than a week without a necessary utility (gas, water, power)
My family was evicted or foreclosed on
My home suffered from a vermin infestation
I ate Lunch at school because it was free
I ate breakfast in the school lunch room, because it was free
I was not the oldest, and all my clothing was used
EDIT:
I knew nobody but me COULD pay for my college
I'm the first woman in 3 generations to not be pregnant by age 18.
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I think my definition of priviledge is being given enough to acheive damn near anything you want to without having to factor in the cost of failing. If that even makes sense.
I don't even know ... but I think I am going to go call my mom & dad.
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The best thing that ever happened to me was moving in with my grandparents. The best thing that ever happened to my sisters was when my mom and them moved next to my grandparents.
I agree with the priviledge thing. Now that I'm in a fairly successful situation (My husband has a good job, we own our house (thanks to a perfect-timing sale of my old house in florida that I only was buying because it was cheeper to pay a farm home loan than pay rent) I have time and money to go to school), it's scary. I have this recurring terror that I'm gonna finish my 2 yr degree and it won't get me a good job and I'll have wasted all this money and time. My husband, who came up a little better than me is like "so what? You'll go back and get something else if you want to." and even his trust in me is terrifying.
I need to go call my grandparents.
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-knew nobody but me would pay for my college
- didn’t have cable TV
- was the oldest, and all my clothing was kept for younger siblings..
I can add a few other things;
- Had cheese & bread for 3 meals a day..
- Never ate at a restaurant
- Never owned any brand clothes (Gap, Levis etc.)
I've never really lacked anything. My parents have owned their own home since before I was born..it's in one of the best streets in the area I live in. *But* they both were without jobs in the late 80s due to a crack in the economics..(Think it happened all over the world)
But thanks to foresight on my fathers part (money saved) + a situation where his work gave him an option of 1yr paid leave *or* for him to be supported thru college (He had a master in Computers beforehand, which sadly meant he wouldn't find any work) he was able to study for a bachelor and in the early 90s, and get a job as an accountant.
While he studied, my mom looked after us kids + watched other people's kids, thus getting a little money.. Then, when my father got a steady job, my mom finally got a job (I was 13) and decided she wanted to finish high school. She did so while working full time for the local phone company (she started studying the moment she got the job, scared that she might loose her job due to lack of education if we went thru another bad time (those with higher education are often safer in bad times + get better paid..)
Anyways, my dad is now the boss of the accountant firm. My mom is one of four who kept their jobs when the phone company decided to try something new..
They now belong in the upper middle class. But you wouldn't know it just to look at them. Fair enough, they spend more than they once did, but never have they forgotten the hard times.
And neither have I..I worry about money and it drives my BF nuts. His parents hid their financial worries from him too well:-(
Anyways, my childhood cannot be compared to yours. You had it *way* worse! But y'know, behind a "perfect" home, there can still be people wondering how the bills are gonna be paid...
xx
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I think everyone's childhood pain and fear and distress is their own. Equally valid. I wasn't going for a "more trauma than thou" thing here, just making sure that people realize that not having an IRA in high school doesn't make them under-privileged.
Those hungry-times leave a mark. Pack-rat behavior and the like. For a while, my ex and I were kind of couch-surfing/homeless, and I kept everything that was important in my purse. I can't carry one anymore, because I put everything I don't want to have taken away in it and it ends up being way too heavy.
With my husband and my relative success, I really don't know how to cope with money. I sort of spend it down until it's the small amounts that I know what to do with. We don't do much credit card debt, but if there's money in the bank for much more than the bills it's foreign territory.
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Hypocrite why?
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I'm not saying my mom raised us bad. I mean, I am who I am and she had some influence on that, both the good and not-so-good.
Maybe she did do everything she was capable of. I can't rewind and look at what she dealt with every day.
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And I also didn't do it because imho it's meant to be humbling for the majority of people who take it, not to be like awww, yeah, look what I lived without.
It's also irritating, because no one who feels like they worked for what they have wants to have it thrown in their face that they've had their very foundations handed to them, even if in my case I did have my foundations laid for me by my parents. I'll admit that I'm only human and I like being petted on the head and told I've done good and worked hard in my life, something I hear most often from the parents who paved my road for me. But-- if my parents had done the privlidge meme, not one single thing would be bolded on either of theirs. Then again, very little from your version of the meme would be bolded either.
I'm enormously privlidged-- and to say that a lot of people would think that I grew up wealthy as wealthy is defined by television. To me wealth was defined by always having enough food, even if it wasn't the food we might have liked to have had at that moment (and not having what we wanted was rare-- I remember during one lean-ish time my mom asking my sister and I if we'd mind having something else for dinner other than chicken, so that the chicken we had left could be saved for my dad, and she looked so ashamed to have to ask. We were jazzed about getting to have toast and peanut butter for dinner because mmmm, toast, but I know I'm privlidged because it was odd enough that I do remember it happening and I remember the other times when my mom would have "already eaten" when serving dinner-- the fact that I remember means it was odd.) And always a place to live, a new jacket ever winter, boots that fit, heat that was on one way or another and knowing that if something horrible happened to my parents and they weren't there to take care of us there were always aunts and uncles and friends.
And, as with anything, even your meme is imprecise, even if it does, imho, hit the nail on the head a lot better. I saw my dad do drugs (pot, when he was practicing with his band) and all my clothes were saved for my sister, and we didn't have cable (there was no cable where we lived) but that was more to do with my parents being reformed hippies than any kind of hardship. And I surely have lived without power and running water for a week or three at a time, but when you chose to live in the woods you chose to be the last one on the power company's list for getting stuff turned back on after a blizzard or hurricaine. Woodstoves for the win.
Still, if I filled it out without commentary, the snapshot from that would be a far cry from the life I know I've lived. I don't like the privlidge meme on livejournal, because I think it's strayed from it's original intent, and what are people trying to prove by posting it?
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The funny thing is, I remember little lack of food in my childhood. Foodstamps go far when you're buying raw ingredients, no convenience food at all, and growing a huge garden all the time. It used to piss me off that whoever mom was married to or dating at the time got the lion's share of the best parts, but we always got some meat or whatever (when she wasn't with a vegetarian).
Heh. I didn't even think of power or water being off for utility-company reasons. I was thinking lack-of-payment reasons.
I posted the priviledge meme too, but it felt funny to do, and yeah, I have no idea what I was trying to prove. My commentary mostly points out that that thing isn't very accurate.
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I knew what the intent was on your meme-- which is a good one, by the way-- but the thing is that people can manipulate the answers without technically lying, if they've got a mind to.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, memes are supposed to be innocent fun, for the most part, and the privlidge meme leaving the classroom and heading for the internets didn't seem like such a hot idea.
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The pot farm hidden in a secret room in the chicken coop helped ends meet a lot too. I remember when I was about 11. My real dad came to the house and bought drugs from my step-dad and barely nodded to me.
Memes are supposed to be innocent fun, and I think I didn't realize this one wasn't for me until I was already riled up.
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Because at that point I think the defining privilege is whether or not your parents cared whether you lived or died.
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I was always sure my mom wanted me to be alive. She chose to have me move out rather than the boyfriend who was molesting me in my sleep and looking in the bathroom window while I showered though.
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I do know that we definitely weren't middle-class, but I think like most people we lived in that space where money is always an issue but most of life's smaller luxuries can still be afforded.
I remember Cindy Crawford once said that the best part of being a supermodel was not having a broken vehicle be the difference between surviving and not. That's what I aspire towards, not fearing the lack of money.
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It's a good goal.
I think the parents' money-savy has a lot to do with the feeling of poverty. To some point, my mom chose the poverty as part of a semi-hippie lifestyle. Some stuff just wasn't necessary to be like that.
Again, I dunno if I could have done everything better in her shoes.
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And I really dislike the fact that it tries to make you feel like crap either way. It's a no-win situation. The hardest thing a person's been through is still the hardest thing they've been through. Just because it doesn't compare to someone else's pain of suffering doesn't make it less real to that person.
Daniel peed in a bucket until he was like 11 or something and considers himself priveledged that he grew up in the country and had two loving parents who didn't beat the crap out of him. I grew up in the lap of luxury (upper middle class) and my parents made mine and my siblings life a living hell for the majority of our childhoods. Yes, we had money, new stuff, every material thing a kid could ask for including the proverbial trust fund, but it all means shit, when you're holding your baby brother and hiding under the bed when your parents are screaming at one another trying to keep him from crying and drawing attention to you. I don't feel priveledged to have lived in that environment. Luxury doesn't equal priveldge.
rrrrg. Sorry for the rant. These things get my dander up as well.