How soon we forget; how far we have come

I’ve been growing more worried about the ‘economic situation’ as I watch tangible things around me unravel; jobs dry up, businesses close, and yet home prices still way out of my reach. And while I have been hating my postdoc for what it is, a temporary, uncertain, low-paying position, I’m now glad that I have a position and an income at all.

I have been worried about money my whole life. My parents spent a lot of time worrying about money, and I grew up very, very frugally. I grew up like it was always a recession, if not a down right depression. And I was loaded with guilt if I wanted to spend money on something. My father grew up without shoes, and my mother remembers the war. If that doesn’t guilt you into eating your gristle, nothing will. Anyway, as a result, I now have financial (and food) issues. When I get stressed, I stop spending money. Sounds good eh? It’s not, because it comes with a worrying, nagging, guilty feeling that I’ve tried to escape most of my life, and have really only been successful in the past few years.

I also left home at an early age. I remember having less than 20$ to my name for many of those early years, and I remember not having heating or food as well. When I finally decided to get my act together and go back to school, I often sacrificed food for tuition, and would then wander the halls between classes looking for spare change under the vending machines, hoping to save enough money to by a cup of soup or bowl of rice.

So that’s my story. It’s old enough now, and I’ve been well fed for long enough that I don’t think too much of it until something reminds me. That happened very unexpectedly this morning. I was at the lab bench listening to a radio story about a group of friends who decided to crunch the numbers and figure out how little low-income people have to spend on food. They came up with $80 per month. And they decided to live off that for a few months and compare notes; a sort-of social experiment for them. The details of their story was enough to send me right back to my late teens-early 20s and the worry, doubt, guilt, desperation I felt living off a sac of rice. That pit of the stomach feeling wasn’t just hunger, but also fear. I was actually emotionally stimulated enough by the radio article that I had to leave the room and take a break.

Later that afternoon, as I was entering my office, it hit me again but in a different way. I have an office. My own office. With windows. Two of them. And food in my desk. And heat in my home. And clothes on my back. I am safe, and well fed, and warm. So why won’t this uneasy feeling go away?