First of all, right now I am not working. The last day of my last job was September 15, 2011. My disability case is in the third, and last, round of appeal and if I don't get it this time, I will be back to being the working poor again. My disability is a mental illness: I'm bipolar. I was born this way, I always was this way, and I will always be this way. I started working when I was 14 years old. By the time I got fired for the last time in 2011 and I filed for disability, I had worked my full 40 quarters. Basically, I qualify for retirement, full Social Security benefits -- not just Social Security disability.
Let me tell you a little about me. I am educated. I have a Bachelor's of science from a major university in Colorado. I have a patent pending for a product I invented. I am the antithesis of lazy, but I'm still fat as all get out. I eat very healthy and I usually exercise regularly. I have aspirations to one day have a Master's degree.
I own my own home, kind of. It's in the divorce paperwork that I get the house. But my credit is miserable... the word that comes to mind is "leper" because when I got fired from my last job I couldn't pay my bills anymore. Unemployment is a fraction of what you make, and then with my divorce happening at the same time, and going from a dual income to a single income on top of getting fired again, there was a vegan's chance in Texas that I would be able to make ends meet. As far as the house goes, I bought it by saving up all my money, living on 60 percent of what I made in about two years, and using my husband-at-the-time's credit score and my little pile of cash for the down payment and some furniture and paint. The house is now my joy and proud fortune and also my greatest anxiety. What if I don't get approved for disability, and I can't repair my credit by Dec 31, 2014 like the terms state? What if I am too far gone? Will I really be homeless this time?
During the time that I was married, with both of us working, saving up money, buying a house, we were still below average income for a married couple. As much as I've ever been able to work in my entire life, since I was 15, and qualifying for full Social Security benefits by age 29, I have only ever been able to work part time because of my mental illness. Like I said, I'm the antithesis of lazy.
I come from a pretty wealthy neighborhood in Southern California. My dad always had money, and so did my mom. But I remember having to fight for every dollar they spent on me, even as a child. I remember as young as 8 years old, if I wanted something, I had to find a way to afford it or work for it. In high school I was borrowing money from my friends to afford lunch until my next paycheck. I'll say it so you don't have to... yes, my family puts the FUN in dysfunctional. But this is where things get really weird, and you can really see the sneaky, dirty fingers of poverty take their firm grip around my throat.
Because of the nature of my illness and the dysfunction of my family, and being that I did everything I did without any help, I got a bunch of credit cards during the brief time I lived on campus. Because I was an unmedicated bipolar type 1, I spent lots of this "fake" credit card money on things that I didn't need or even want, because that's sometimes what unmedicated bipolar type 1 people do when they are manic. Within six months, I had run up about $5,000 in debt, and before that I didn't even know what a credit card was or how to get one or how they worked. Isn't a parent supposed to tell you about that stuff at some point? How does a person learn? This was before the Internet, before cell phones, but it wasn't before dinnertime, before parenting. That was the first finger of poverty around my throat.
Since there was no place to really work where I moved, and no one to really sell things to either there, I decided to move with my new best friend to a nearby city in Colorado. My car got repossessed almost as soon as I moved. I didn't know anything about that either. One day, it was just gone, and all of a sudden I was a person whose car had been repossessed. Even though I felt like I could breathe easier at the time because I was relieved that the phone calls had stopped, this was the second finger resting gently on my larynx until I tried to move; then I could really feel the pressure. If I filled out an application for an apartment, that repossession hurt my credit, and I was denied. When it came time to buy a car many years later, I was denied because of that repossession, and so on.
During the early years of my marriage and my engagement, I worked anywhere from two to three jobs simultaneously, up to 17 hours a day. An oft-overlooked perk of being bipolar is that you can stay awake for days, and since I'm not lazy, I would really rather be working than doing anything else. I would get to the YMCA to lifeguard or teach swimming lessons around 4:45 or 5 a.m., leave there between 10 a.m. and noon, get to the next job between 11 a.m. and noon and stay there until five or six, and then finish out the dinner rush and close the restaurant at the third job. During this time, my fiancé/husband was in his manbaby phase, and worked at either Sherwin Williams, Hollywood Video, or the same restaurant as me, or any combination of those up to two. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term manbaby, this phase begins at birth and usually lasts until the age of 30 but can go on as long as the man insists. Many men actually die babies. And that's that.
The difference was that since I was working so much, he knew there would be enough to pay for all the bills and he felt very entitled to spending every last cent on as much junk food, cigarettes, and video games/movies as he could fit into our apartment. So, why didn't I say "Hey, we have more than enough money and we need to live below our means, and save for the future"? Well here is why. First of all, refer to fingers one and two. Second of all, I was still mostly a kid, with a severe mental illness, just trying to pay rent, eat food, get things. And third of all, because my marriage was ridiculous. I didn't know it at the time, but I was in survival mode. And that's the third finger. What a strong grasp it has on me now. Whether it actually strangles me to death or not, I'll never be able to get away.
During the roughly 12 rough years I was married I did accomplish loosening the grasp poverty had on me. When I say loosen, I mean that in the true sense of the word loosen, like its grip was firm but not tight. During this time I kept working my part time jobs and getting fired, one after another, and he kept working his full-time jobs and then quitting, just walking off. I didn't even know I could file for unemployment until my last job fired me! To find out that I, Carly, could get unemployment -- that I could get money and also work my ridiculous low paying jobs -- and somehow escape some of the fear and anxiety and the shame of inevitably being fired for my illness yet again... and even though the grip was firm but not tight, this was the fourth finger: The way I saw myself, and the mounting list of terminations on my resume of low paying jobs.
When I was 25 I decided I wanted to really make a difference in my life. I found something I was passionate about, and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of obese people, and those who suffered from diets. So I decided to try again at college, and I enrolled as a health science major. During my time at school, I worked at one or two jobs at a time. I was medicated for part of the time, which is I think the entire reason I was able to graduate or even make it to class. That is not to say it was a walk in the park. I still had a mental illness, it was still disabling, I could barely function. The only reason I didn't get fired from school was because I paid them in order for me to be there.
Poverty sits on top of me, like an intruder in my house that snuck into my bedroom and I can't get it off of me, and I wake up struggling to breathe. Every day. I thought things would be okay. I hoped they would be okay more than I thought they would be okay. Why would I do that? I know I'm a poor person. I know I have a disability. I know I can't keep a job. I know all of this. Why would I have thought something like getting myself into a house would be a good idea? Trying to manage my money myself? I know I can't do that! But I didn't want to ask for help, I didn't want to say I couldn't.
Well those days are long gone. Like this far: looooooooooooong gone. I have been denied disability the standard one time, like everyone else. The doctor from the Social Security administration who evaluated me sent his letter of recommendation: "She is not able to work, and cannot take care of herself. She needs immediate approval of benefits." The result? DENIED. Then on to my appeal, in front of a judge, with my lawyer. The prosecution rested their case and made their recommendation to the presiding judge: there is no way this girl can sustain gainful employment. Two weeks later, my letter came: DENIED. So now, my third and final appeal.
And the trouble I'm in is this. I need medication in order to function in any capacity, especially at work. I have a severe mental illness. I am unemployable. I cannot work more than part time, and I can't go without medication, and I have to have regular access to health care. Part time work often does not offer insurance. The places that do, I have already been fired from. I cannot follow a simple recipe for chocolate chip cookies, even while medicated without help, in my own kitchen, without the threat of being written up looming over me. Imagine how that translates to on the job performance! I am sure there is something in the Affordable Care Act for me, but I wonder how "affordable" this Obamacare really is, considering the amount of money I will really be making working a low wage with part-time hours.
This is how I came to be in poverty's grip. It was not overnight, and it was not all because of me, and not all because a system that failed me, and not all because of a dysfunctional family, and not all because of overblown capitalism, and not all because of any one thing. It was a very unfortunate combination of things, mostly unfortunate because of the constant suffocation and confusion. And I'm sure it's that way for every single person who wakes up every morning with poverty choking them in their beds while the rich people on the other side of town wake up in peace.
You know what you can't say about me, and I don't want to hear it, so let's just get a few things clear right out of the gate. First of all, as I've said, I'm the antithesis of lazy. Second, I'm not greedy. I donate money all the time, even though I have very little. Third, I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't do drugs and never have. I don't have children. I don't sell my food stamps for whatever you would accuse me of selling them for. Whatever you want to accuse me of frivolously spending money on, I also don't do that. Yes, I have walked to work in blizzards, in negative degree weather, for miles, in the dark, so I don't want to be accused of that kind of unwillingness either. I have gone to school, finished school, started my own company, and closed it down. But poverty is a worthy adversary, and it takes more than a degree and inventing a product to overcome it. It takes more than a village, it takes more than raising a child in wealth. Poverty is not a choice we make but rather a series of consequences of other people's choices and a handful of our own, just like affluence. We just hope that there will be a morning, some morning, even just one, where we don't wake up with that uninvited intruder in our bedroom, making us struggle to breathe.
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Carly's story is part of a Huffington Post series profiling Americans who work hard and yet still struggle to make ends meet. Learn more about other individuals' experiences here.
Have a similar story you'd like to share? Email us at workingpoor@huffingtonpost.com or give us a call at (408) 508-4833, and you can record your story in your own words. Please be sure to include your name and phone number.
Let me tell you a little about me. I am educated. I have a Bachelor's of science from a major university in Colorado. I have a patent pending for a product I invented. I am the antithesis of lazy, but I'm still fat as all get out. I eat very healthy and I usually exercise regularly. I have aspirations to one day have a Master's degree.
I own my own home, kind of. It's in the divorce paperwork that I get the house. But my credit is miserable... the word that comes to mind is "leper" because when I got fired from my last job I couldn't pay my bills anymore. Unemployment is a fraction of what you make, and then with my divorce happening at the same time, and going from a dual income to a single income on top of getting fired again, there was a vegan's chance in Texas that I would be able to make ends meet. As far as the house goes, I bought it by saving up all my money, living on 60 percent of what I made in about two years, and using my husband-at-the-time's credit score and my little pile of cash for the down payment and some furniture and paint. The house is now my joy and proud fortune and also my greatest anxiety. What if I don't get approved for disability, and I can't repair my credit by Dec 31, 2014 like the terms state? What if I am too far gone? Will I really be homeless this time?
During the time that I was married, with both of us working, saving up money, buying a house, we were still below average income for a married couple. As much as I've ever been able to work in my entire life, since I was 15, and qualifying for full Social Security benefits by age 29, I have only ever been able to work part time because of my mental illness. Like I said, I'm the antithesis of lazy.
I come from a pretty wealthy neighborhood in Southern California. My dad always had money, and so did my mom. But I remember having to fight for every dollar they spent on me, even as a child. I remember as young as 8 years old, if I wanted something, I had to find a way to afford it or work for it. In high school I was borrowing money from my friends to afford lunch until my next paycheck. I'll say it so you don't have to... yes, my family puts the FUN in dysfunctional. But this is where things get really weird, and you can really see the sneaky, dirty fingers of poverty take their firm grip around my throat.
Because of the nature of my illness and the dysfunction of my family, and being that I did everything I did without any help, I got a bunch of credit cards during the brief time I lived on campus. Because I was an unmedicated bipolar type 1, I spent lots of this "fake" credit card money on things that I didn't need or even want, because that's sometimes what unmedicated bipolar type 1 people do when they are manic. Within six months, I had run up about $5,000 in debt, and before that I didn't even know what a credit card was or how to get one or how they worked. Isn't a parent supposed to tell you about that stuff at some point? How does a person learn? This was before the Internet, before cell phones, but it wasn't before dinnertime, before parenting. That was the first finger of poverty around my throat.
Since there was no place to really work where I moved, and no one to really sell things to either there, I decided to move with my new best friend to a nearby city in Colorado. My car got repossessed almost as soon as I moved. I didn't know anything about that either. One day, it was just gone, and all of a sudden I was a person whose car had been repossessed. Even though I felt like I could breathe easier at the time because I was relieved that the phone calls had stopped, this was the second finger resting gently on my larynx until I tried to move; then I could really feel the pressure. If I filled out an application for an apartment, that repossession hurt my credit, and I was denied. When it came time to buy a car many years later, I was denied because of that repossession, and so on.
During the early years of my marriage and my engagement, I worked anywhere from two to three jobs simultaneously, up to 17 hours a day. An oft-overlooked perk of being bipolar is that you can stay awake for days, and since I'm not lazy, I would really rather be working than doing anything else. I would get to the YMCA to lifeguard or teach swimming lessons around 4:45 or 5 a.m., leave there between 10 a.m. and noon, get to the next job between 11 a.m. and noon and stay there until five or six, and then finish out the dinner rush and close the restaurant at the third job. During this time, my fiancé/husband was in his manbaby phase, and worked at either Sherwin Williams, Hollywood Video, or the same restaurant as me, or any combination of those up to two. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term manbaby, this phase begins at birth and usually lasts until the age of 30 but can go on as long as the man insists. Many men actually die babies. And that's that.
The difference was that since I was working so much, he knew there would be enough to pay for all the bills and he felt very entitled to spending every last cent on as much junk food, cigarettes, and video games/movies as he could fit into our apartment. So, why didn't I say "Hey, we have more than enough money and we need to live below our means, and save for the future"? Well here is why. First of all, refer to fingers one and two. Second of all, I was still mostly a kid, with a severe mental illness, just trying to pay rent, eat food, get things. And third of all, because my marriage was ridiculous. I didn't know it at the time, but I was in survival mode. And that's the third finger. What a strong grasp it has on me now. Whether it actually strangles me to death or not, I'll never be able to get away.
During the roughly 12 rough years I was married I did accomplish loosening the grasp poverty had on me. When I say loosen, I mean that in the true sense of the word loosen, like its grip was firm but not tight. During this time I kept working my part time jobs and getting fired, one after another, and he kept working his full-time jobs and then quitting, just walking off. I didn't even know I could file for unemployment until my last job fired me! To find out that I, Carly, could get unemployment -- that I could get money and also work my ridiculous low paying jobs -- and somehow escape some of the fear and anxiety and the shame of inevitably being fired for my illness yet again... and even though the grip was firm but not tight, this was the fourth finger: The way I saw myself, and the mounting list of terminations on my resume of low paying jobs.
When I was 25 I decided I wanted to really make a difference in my life. I found something I was passionate about, and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of obese people, and those who suffered from diets. So I decided to try again at college, and I enrolled as a health science major. During my time at school, I worked at one or two jobs at a time. I was medicated for part of the time, which is I think the entire reason I was able to graduate or even make it to class. That is not to say it was a walk in the park. I still had a mental illness, it was still disabling, I could barely function. The only reason I didn't get fired from school was because I paid them in order for me to be there.
Poverty sits on top of me, like an intruder in my house that snuck into my bedroom and I can't get it off of me, and I wake up struggling to breathe. Every day. I thought things would be okay. I hoped they would be okay more than I thought they would be okay. Why would I do that? I know I'm a poor person. I know I have a disability. I know I can't keep a job. I know all of this. Why would I have thought something like getting myself into a house would be a good idea? Trying to manage my money myself? I know I can't do that! But I didn't want to ask for help, I didn't want to say I couldn't.
Well those days are long gone. Like this far: looooooooooooong gone. I have been denied disability the standard one time, like everyone else. The doctor from the Social Security administration who evaluated me sent his letter of recommendation: "She is not able to work, and cannot take care of herself. She needs immediate approval of benefits." The result? DENIED. Then on to my appeal, in front of a judge, with my lawyer. The prosecution rested their case and made their recommendation to the presiding judge: there is no way this girl can sustain gainful employment. Two weeks later, my letter came: DENIED. So now, my third and final appeal.
And the trouble I'm in is this. I need medication in order to function in any capacity, especially at work. I have a severe mental illness. I am unemployable. I cannot work more than part time, and I can't go without medication, and I have to have regular access to health care. Part time work often does not offer insurance. The places that do, I have already been fired from. I cannot follow a simple recipe for chocolate chip cookies, even while medicated without help, in my own kitchen, without the threat of being written up looming over me. Imagine how that translates to on the job performance! I am sure there is something in the Affordable Care Act for me, but I wonder how "affordable" this Obamacare really is, considering the amount of money I will really be making working a low wage with part-time hours.
This is how I came to be in poverty's grip. It was not overnight, and it was not all because of me, and not all because a system that failed me, and not all because of a dysfunctional family, and not all because of overblown capitalism, and not all because of any one thing. It was a very unfortunate combination of things, mostly unfortunate because of the constant suffocation and confusion. And I'm sure it's that way for every single person who wakes up every morning with poverty choking them in their beds while the rich people on the other side of town wake up in peace.
You know what you can't say about me, and I don't want to hear it, so let's just get a few things clear right out of the gate. First of all, as I've said, I'm the antithesis of lazy. Second, I'm not greedy. I donate money all the time, even though I have very little. Third, I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't do drugs and never have. I don't have children. I don't sell my food stamps for whatever you would accuse me of selling them for. Whatever you want to accuse me of frivolously spending money on, I also don't do that. Yes, I have walked to work in blizzards, in negative degree weather, for miles, in the dark, so I don't want to be accused of that kind of unwillingness either. I have gone to school, finished school, started my own company, and closed it down. But poverty is a worthy adversary, and it takes more than a degree and inventing a product to overcome it. It takes more than a village, it takes more than raising a child in wealth. Poverty is not a choice we make but rather a series of consequences of other people's choices and a handful of our own, just like affluence. We just hope that there will be a morning, some morning, even just one, where we don't wake up with that uninvited intruder in our bedroom, making us struggle to breathe.
Carly's story is part of a Huffington Post series profiling Americans who work hard and yet still struggle to make ends meet. Learn more about other individuals' experiences here.
Have a similar story you'd like to share? Email us at workingpoor@huffingtonpost.com or give us a call at (408) 508-4833, and you can record your story in your own words. Please be sure to include your name and phone number.