On Wednesdays, I take my afternoon team meeting on my phone so that I can stand in line at the Y’s food pantry.

I shuffle my feet and try not to make eye contact with the other people who are here 30 minutes or an hour early so that we can be the first ones inside. By the time the doors open at 3 p.m., the line will be through the lobby all the way to the sidewalk just past the entrance.

There are rules to how much you can take, but the fresh food is always what goes first. That’s why I show up so early. My toddler, like most children, is obsessed with fruit. But she also likes to snack on raw veggies, and I like for her to have some things that didn’t come out of a can or a box. Sometimes, depending on what’s in stock, I can even get proteins, a huge weight off my weekly budget.

“And that’s all I have for online education,” my coworker chirps through my earbud.

One of the first things I did after my divorce was look into social assistance programs. My pay is too high to qualify for SNAP. I don’t receive child support, though I have custody 50 percent of the time. I have a full-time job with steady pay and freelance to supplement my income. I offer photography services for a fee. For most of the first year post-divorce, I worked in retail in the evenings I didn’t have my kiddo, but I had to give it up after the constant barrage of cruel treatment by customers angered by rising prices and inflation deeply impacted my mental health.

I learned that all the government cares about is your gross income. They don’t care about how many bills you have and how little is left over after all those bills are paid.

“Okay, thanks, everyone! Have a great rest of your week, and we’ll be in touch on Slack.” I hang up without speaking, in case my coworkers can hear the buzz of other voices in the background.

The program leader steps to the front of the line, keys in hand to open the food bank for the day. We all snap to attention, our empty bags rattling in unison.

When I meal prep for the week, I do so with as much precision as possible. I know how many meals I can stretch the groceries into, the exact portion sizes that will get us through to the next week.

“Mama, wha’chu eating?” My toddler’s fingers appear on the edge of my bowl. We are eating the same thing, and I know she knows this, but I also know this is her way of asking for more.

“Still hungry?” I ask.

“Mm!”

“Bring your bowl, Bug.”

She comes over, setting her bowl gently on the couch next to me. I spoon out noodles and vegetables and imitation crab until her bowl is refilled.

“Thanks!” She takes her food back to her table and sits. We’re watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse tonight.

I look down at my bowl, now half empty. I will do this and more for her, if she needs me to.

It won’t always be this way, I remind myself. This is just the season you’re in.

I spoon the food into my mouth and watch my kid do the Hot Dog Dance, trying to ignore the void in my gut that’s only partially hunger.

“You’re always complaining about money, but I know you eat at McDonald’s once a week,” my ex says.

If you’re having money problems, it’s your own fault, is what I hear.

Deep breaths, I remind myself. He makes three times my salary, and currently lives with his parents, who don’t charge him any bills. Every week, he and our child eat avocado toast with smoked salmon for lunches. In just the last year, he took himself on vacation to Iceland, several Caribbean islands, and Morocco, where he ate food that I have only seen on travel YouTube channels. If he wanted to, he could hire a personal chef, and it wouldn’t even make a dent in his monthly budget.

How do you explain to someone like that that sometimes, the $15 you spend on fast food is worth the hit it takes to your finances? That when you can’t justify the cost of going to the movies or bowling or out to the bar, one greasy burger and soggy French fries are a luxury, a rush of serotonin that makes the rest of it feel okay for a while.

“I get tired of eating mac and cheese and ramen the weeks I’m home alone,” I tell him, somewhat flippantly. I just want the conversation to be over.

He’s aghast. “That stuff is terrible for you. You’re going to regret eating that in 20 years.”

I watch our kid shriek with laughter on the playground slide. Deep breaths.

“I’m doing what I can right now,” I say.

One of my best friends back home in Pennsylvania goes to a church’s food bank where she can get everything from chicken thighs to Doritos to frozen vegetables and dried beans.

“I’m going again this Friday,” she texts me. “Send me a list of what you need, and I’ll get what I can and send it along with your parents when they come to visit next.”

I close my eyes and take a few breaths. Bluey and Bingo are getting into mischief on the living room TV, and my toddler is more interested in sitting at her table there and coloring than watching me make butter chicken. My ex not-so-casually offered to buy the chicken thighs on a dual grocery run we did last week. The brown rice I’m serving it with was left in my freezer by a friend after she came for an overnight visit. Small mercies everywhere. My kid is busy in her own world, but I don’t want to cry anyway, just in case.

“I’ll go through my pantry and let you know tomorrow?” I text back.

“Take your time,” she responds. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

When my mom comes down from Pennsylvania to visit, she brings freezer bags full of food and then spends the entire week cooking. I feel anxious, making myself scarce when she’s in the kitchen. It’s like I’m caught between the child who loves being cared for and the adult who feels guilty they’re putting their mother to work when she’s a guest.

“You’re a single parent working multiple jobs,” she tells me every time I thank her. “I can’t be here every day, but when I’m here, I can make sure you’re fed.”

Not having to worry about where the food comes from, how much it will cost, when I’ll have the energy to cook it and deal with the aftermath of dirty dishes and garbage bags are rare reprieves. The weight I don’t realize I’ve been carrying lifts. Thank you doesn’t feel like nearly enough.

We eat my mother’s homemade meals sitting at my dining room table. My kid doesn’t eat any differently than when she eats what I make, doesn’t seem to notice when I go back to the stove for seconds. Thirds.

I eat until I’m no longer hungry, my heart full to bursting.

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Moriah Richard (she/they) has worked in publishing for over 10 years, editing everything from literary magazines to prescriptive nonfiction books to high fantasy novels and beyond. She’s currently the managing editor for Writer’s Digest magazine, where her world-building column was a 2023 Eddie & Ozzie Award winner, and her ever-growing Flash Fiction February Challenge invites writers to write every day for a month and share their work with the online community. For more information on Moriah’s virtual writing classes, freelance editorial rates, and more, visit MoriahRichard.com.

I’ve had $17 on my EBT card for about a week now, but don’t want to spend it because then I’d have nothing. Panic might set in, making me more prone to reckless behavior like bingeing or buying drugs, neither of which I can afford.

I wait until the last possible minute before driving to Walmart for groceries, where I fill my cart with basics: bananas, almond milk, potatoes, frozen spinach, an economy-sized jar of peanut butter. I know the $17 on my EBT card will only cover a portion of this, but it’s okay because my part time per diem remote job is going to give me a new project any day now.

One crisis at a time, I think to myself wryly.

“Scarcity” is a word I’ve been using regularly for years to describe my mindset around food.

Growing up with six younger siblings on a pastor’s salary, meals usually consisted of things that were cheap to buy in bulk. My favorite lunch, which I’d prepare several times a week, involved boiling 12 cups of water in a large pot and then adding six packs of instant ramen noodles. To make it a real meal, I’d also add two or three cans of chicken. The best part was peeling open the lid and drinking the flavorful broth. There were certain privileges that came with cooking duty.

There was always food on the table, but not always enough for seconds. We siblings would race to get our favorite parts before they were gone—the biggest pieces of canned chicken, the most broth. (We’d save the leftover ramen for the next day, and it was always somehow dry and gelatinous at the same time, all the remaining liquid soaked up by the noodles. Rarely was there any leftover chicken.)

In our house, I learned to be a fast eater. I learned to save the best for last, pushing it to the side of my plate for safekeeping. We were never actually starving, but it always felt like the last to the table would get less than everyone else.

It wasn’t long before we started stealing food from the pantry outside of mealtimes. Mostly it was candy, which was limited to two pieces a day and policed by our mother. But she always took a nap from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, which was when we binged.

I never saw it as bingeing until years later, when bulimia ruled my life. But now I recognize the same desperate cravings, the same secrecy, the same relief when it’s just you and your spoils behind closed doors. This pattern would also repeat itself in my substance use.

Sometimes I wonder if food was my first addiction.

Occasionally, we’d get caught stealing from the pantry and punished with a spanking (if we were little) or no dessert (if we were not so little). More often than not, we turned each other in. Usually it was boys against girls, each faction trying to get the other in as much trouble as possible so no one would notice when we turned around and committed the same crime. This created a culture of suspicion, envy, and resentment. All over food.

Now that the seven of us are adults, we laugh about the “candy wars.” But for me, that was only the beginning of a life marked by food insecurity—if not actual, then imagined.

The day after my trip to Walmart, I check my EBT account and notice that my funds have finally appeared for the first time since the government shutdown. Go figure, I think. But I’m relieved. Already I’m thinking of all the things I want to buy.

Olive oil. Delicat a squash. Real greens, not frozen. Coffee creamer, a luxury. Veggie burgers. Avocados. Dark chocolate.

This quickly leads me down a mental path to indulgence, my head filling with forbidden foods—ice cream, cookies, bags of bulk sugary cereal, cases of instant ramen. Funny how my favorite poverty meal as a kid has become one of my go-to binge foods. The broth makes everything come up easier.

But no, I can’t entertain this thinking. I’m done with that sort of thing, aren’t I? Now that food is actually scarce, you’d think my brain would recognize the peril and turn off the part that wants to eat everything in sight, fuck the consequences. I’ve spent my EBT money on binge food in the past, and the shame was nearly unbearable.

Just not enough to keep me from doing it again. And again. And again.

I was diagnosed with bulimia at 17. After a stint in treatment that almost kept me from graduating high school, I got better enough to go to college 700 miles away. It wasn’t long before I relapsed.

Once again, sweets became the target for my lust. I’d walk into the cafeteria and come out with my pockets bulging with cookies. (My favorite kind was cranberry white chocolate chip.) Sometimes I wouldn’t even make it outside, waddling into the tiny cafeteria bathroom and vomiting cookies and hot chocolate into a toilet bowl already stained by others doing the same thing. It was gross, but better than the shared dorm bathrooms, where I’d have to stop if someone came in.

None of this was free, even though it certainly felt like it for me. I was blown away by the seemingly unending supply of binge foods available for the first time in my life. It wasn’t until I ran out of the allotted meals on my food plan that I knew I was in trouble. The semester hadn’t even run its course, and I found myself in a scarcity mindset once more.

Instead of learning my lesson and surviving on peanut butter sandwiches until my meals were replenished, I took the meager earnings from my student job in the marketing department and spent it on junk from the Walmart across the street—giant bags of animal crackers, tubs of Nutella, chocolate chips I’d eat by the handful. I’d stay up until 2 a.m., bingeing and throwing up until I started seeing streaks of blood in my vomit.

Still, I couldn’t stop.

My roommate eventually told the dean, who told my parents, who threatened to pull me out. I promised to start seeing a counselor. During our first session, she put up her feet and ate her lunch right in front of me, even letting out a belch at one point. Disgusted, I decided I was done with bingeing.

Instead, I would starve.

The summer before my sophomore year, my parents were on the verge of bankruptcy. I got two jobs, working at a lakeside hot dog stand and babysitting for the high school principal who lived across the street. It wasn’t long before the stress at home had me grasping for quick and easy sources of comfort.

I’d take my tips from the hot dog stand and spend it all on donuts at the Mexican bakery, which I’d eat while walking home, licking chocolate frosting off my fingers. Purging in the house had become impossible ever since I clogged the downstairs toilet and had to come clean to my mother, so I’d take a big black trash bag into the room above the garage and vomit into it. I’d also use my babysitting gig as an opportunity to binge and purge, waiting until my charges were watching Dora the Explorer before sneaking into the bathroom and kneeling on the tile.

I felt awful. I was losing money, weight, and hair. Yet I clung to bulimia more fiercely than ever. Something told me I was going to need coping methods if I was to survive in a world of uncertainty. Even if they weren’t that good for me, at least they’d keep me alive.

I worked my way through college, taking frequent breaks for financial reasons. By the time I graduated at 25, I was a shift supervisor at Starbucks making $14 an hour. What I lost in wages I gained in free food and drinks. This was the perfect excuse for bulimia to return—after all, bingeing and purging free food didn’t count.

Soon I added alcoholism to my list of coping methods. I maxed out credit cards on Uber Eats, all of which went down the toilet. When I couldn’t use my credit cards anymore, I began to steal food from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. My tactic was to bring in a shopping bag from another store and casually slip things inside, all the while acting like its contents had been purchased at my previous stop. The biggest thing I ever took was an entire gallon of ice cream. (Of course, I got caught. To this day, I’m technically banned from Whole Foods.)

Sometimes I was drunk for this, but more often than not I was sober.

COVID hit and I was furloughed from my administrative job at a catering company (more free food to binge and purge). I used my unemployment money to feed my bulimia until I finally broke down and entered residential treatment in 2021. It was there I finally learned that food could be dependable, neutral. Fuel for your body, not just your emotions.

I was becoming secure in my skin and my relationship to food. Slowly, it lost its power…at least, for a time.

Today, I’m on food stamps and Medicaid. After a lifetime of mental health struggles, I applied for disability in January 2024 but have yet to receive a verdict. I maintain a frugal existence.

Now, my food insecurity is based in reality. In any given month, I worry that my funds will run out early—and they usually do.

It would be one thing if it were just me running out of food, but I live with my sister. We both applied for SNAP when we moved in together—her for the first time, me for the third. We each listed the other as household members because we wanted to be honest and thought it would make sense that more money would be given for more people. Instead, my sister’s application was denied and my monthly amount was reduced. In their eyes, more people equals more income. Now not only are we still scrambling to pay rent each month, but we also have to start tightening our belts.

People tell us to “Just apply again!” It’s hard not to scoff in response. I suppose we should be grateful for whatever we get. After all, we aren’t guaranteed to get it tomorrow.

I still have bulimia, though it’s not as intense as it was in my twenties. I can go weeks without bingeing and purging, and do my best to ensure that what I do eat contains protein and healthy fats. Still, there are moments of weakness. I can’t turn off the part of my brain that beholds my newly-loaded EBT card and sees free binge money. It’s difficult to trust myself sometimes. I tell myself there are others more deserving of aid, who wouldn’t abuse this privilege as I do.

Yet being on SNAP has been a lifesaver. It’s made me more careful about how I spend on food, encouraged me to finally listen to the advice of dietitians and plan my meals. It calms the part of me that wants to eat everything in the pantry before it’s gone. It soothes the voice that tells me I will never have access to *insert forbidden food* again. It allows me to focus on neglected areas of my life that have been swallowed by my preoccupation with food.

Nothing in this life is certain, least of all government benefits. This is another lesson I’ve been forced to learn. So I budget my grocery trips and ration my goods until the next payment hits, all the while keeping my head just above the waters of panic.

There’s always time for that tomorrow.

Join Open Secrets on December 9 at 7 p.m. ET for a Substack Live video Q&A with Christina Jumper about their essay.

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Christina Jumper (known to friends as Chris) is a queer harm reductionist who writes about addiction, eating disorders, religious trauma, and other fun stuff. You may know them from Pickles and Vodka: a Mental Health Podcast, where they tell the unspoken stories of their community while shining a light on their own everyday struggles. One of these days they’ll finish their memoir.

Trader Joe’s creamy tomato soup is one of my ideal comfort foods. Poured from a tetra pack into a bowl, then microwaved for two minutes, stirred, and sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan cheese that melts into a clump. It’s been a staple in my kitchen cabinets for over a decade and is, in my opinion, the perfect tomato soup, but despite always stocking two boxes of it in my cabinet, I haven’t eaten it in almost nine years.

When I first enrolled in SNAP more than a decade ago, my kids were 2 and 3. The funds we were granted didn’t cover our monthly food costs unless I stretched them to a near-breaking point, so one of the habits I developed was always saving foods my children loved for them. The range of foods I’d eat was much broader than the range they were willing to try, and so whenever my kids liked something, I stopped eating it.

Naturally, they discovered foods they loved through me, so I gradually phased out dozens of foods I’d long enjoyed. I came to know early summer strawberries only by their scent and the color of their stains on my kids’ shirt collars. Same for Honeycrisp apples from a local orchard, garlic scape pesto, my favorite homemade cherry pistachio granola, seasonal butternut squash mac and cheese trays, tinned lentil soup, overnight oats made in near-empty Nutella jars, and salted maple ice cream.

There were other foods I ate that my kids didn’t: leafy green salads with mustard vinaigrette and toasted sourdough ends, escarole sauteed with garlic, white beans simmered in chili oil, green tea. I cooked for myself only the foods I knew they’d never eat, and while I was often nourished, I was also establishing a habit that carved deep trenches into my psychology.

In 2020, three years after we stopped receiving SNAP, my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. Her nearly three years of treatment included rounds of steroids which left her overwhelmed by cravings for very specific foods: garlicky creamed kale, crispy fried tofu, dark meat from a whole roasted chicken, and pizza dipped in blue cheese dressing—all foods that I had been preparing for myself over the years. Instead of cooking them for myself, I made huge batches of whatever she was craving and then packed it all away, saving every bite for her.

For most of my life as a mother, there has been continuous math happening in my head: calories per dollar, how many days until an EBT deposit, the cost of broccoli crowns and milk, how I might make everything stretch, what would happen if I just ate a little less. Staving off food insecurity with kids in your home means becoming a master of invisible sacrifices. I learned to prefer the heels of bread loaves and am forever eating the remnants of yesterday’s dinner for lunch. My kids were growing, needing more nutrition than me, and my survival instincts for them were in high gear as I tried to balance on the ever-shifting ground of my fluctuating budget and food costs.

Any time my kids asked about why I was eating a different meal at dinner, I told them I didn’t want leftovers to go to waste or that there were ingredients that needed to be used up. More often they didn’t ask, since they were too young to remember how much I loved what was on their plate—late spring strawberries and thick slabs of fresh bread with salted butter and jam, or crispy salty roasted broccoli florets. They were fed, and fed well, and that was enough.

As our financial situation improved, I got high on the ability to buy groceries. I came to love shopping for food. Knowing my card would never decline at the grocery store made me giddy, but I never got back into eating the foods my kids enjoyed. It’s like some strange reflex; I haven’t stopped saving food for them. There are dozens of abandoned foods scattered throughout my life, like emotional landmines I’ve learned to step around.

I often cook foods and then never eat them, like the apple pie bars I made three days ago: sweetened oat-flour crust and crumble layered with sticky homemade cinnamon apple filling baked in a 9x13 pan. There was more than enough for three people to enjoy over the course of the week, but I left it all for my kids to enjoy as dessert or an after-school snack. There’s an enduring delineation in my mind between “kids’ food” and “my food.” “My food” is often things I enjoy, but it’s also only ever things my children don’t.

My teenagers make about half of their own food now. They’re not in danger of going hungry, and they’d probably think I was unhinged if I explained to them my long-held avoidance of some of their favorite foods. I can hear their voices in my mind, incredulous: Mom, that’s crazy! There’s enough for everyone! They don’t remember a time when there wasn’t.

Food insecurity doesn’t leave when the crisis hour is past. It rewires your brain, creating patterns of self-denial that become part of your personality. It carves tracks in your mind that last a lifetime. You never forget worrying about food. It takes work to remind myself that it’s okay to eat things that my kids like, that there will be enough, that there is a seat for me at my own table.

Food insecurity is so often discussed in terms of policy: statistics, benefit amounts, eligibility requirements, means testing. What gets lost is the psychological aftermath. Poverty doesn’t just limit options in the moment; it changes how you see yourself in relation to resources, to pleasure, to even the basic act of feeding yourself.

I’m writing this on a cold November afternoon. My kids are off from school for Election Day, and my daughter asked if we could have tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch. She wants to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas and decorate (too early, in my opinion) for Christmas. I’m going to allow her this vulgarity, and then I’m going join her on the couch—twin bowls of my beloved Trader Joe’s tomato soup cradled in our laps, warmth radiating through the dish’s blue ceramic.

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Elizabeth Austin’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, Harper’s Bazaar, Electric Literature, and others. She is working on a memoir about being a bad cancer mom. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her two children and their many pets. Find her at writingelizabeth.com.

I assumed that the flippant and ignorant things people said in the comment section of news outlets on Facebook wouldn’t have the power to hurt me. Intellectually, I know that the internet gives folks a heightened sense of confidence that enables them to say some of the darkest and hurtful things about people they don’t even know. That they may not even mean the things they’re saying and even if they do, I don’t know them! But as the date grew closer and closer to November 1st, and I saw more and more Facebook comments suggesting that me and people like me, SNAP recipients, should starve for being so lazy and not “just getting a job,” it started to ruin me.

I normally reject the idea that there is a correct path to take in life. We’re all so varied and life is so incredibly nuanced that it feels impossible to think that there is only one way to spend our time on Earth. However, being in this precarious situation has backed me into a Groundhog Day-like rumination in an effort to figure out where along my own path I’d veered off course.

On paper, I did the things that many of my peers were also told to do, the things that should lead to success and financial stability. I was in the advanced program in high school, I earned my bachelor’s degree from a four-year university, I left behind service industry work to take on more traditionally professional and career-serving roles. And as a rare flex as a millennial, I bought my own home as a single parent without the financial help of my parents. Yet I find myself having to stretch the last $100 in my SNAP account until I receive payment from the government, whenever that may be.

As I said earlier, I don’t believe there’s a specific path in life that each of us has to take in order to be successful. I also fully believe that no one is truly lazy and that you deserve to eat regardless of your employment status. But I do feel that it’s necessary to talk about my accolades in order to get people to understand that I’m not the negative stereotype that’s being pushed to define SNAP recipients—and that those accolades have done nothing to protect me from ending up here.

Growing up, my family’s financial stability had its ebbs and flows. I remember times where we were bored out of our minds because there was absolutely nothing on all 80+ channels of our cable TV. There were afternoons spent laying on a friend’s bed while everyone gathered around me to look at all the new backgrounds because I was the first with a full color flip phone in my grade. I also remember my mother sobbing on Christmas Day because our Angel Tree donor gifted my little brother with office supplies instead of the art supplies my mother requested. I also recall having to sit out of the major end-of-year field trips you take in eighth and twelfth grades because my single mother of four couldn’t afford to do that for all of her kids, so none of us did. During those harder times, we were fed through SNAP/food stamps.

Even with so little, my mother made it work. Thinking about it now, with just one child, I don’t think I could carry the weight of the pressure of knowing that I was fully financially responsible for four human beings. While that pressure definitely took its toll on our family, it showed me how to be resourceful and how to survive. That there is always a way out and up!

It also helped that my mother never taught us to feel any less than because we relied on assisted services occasionally. The food she was able to purchase, while sometimes absolutely random because of program restrictions, became some of my and my siblings’ favorite meals growing up. A few meals that come to mind are rice and ground beef or turkey or open-faced grilled cheese. It wasn’t until about five or six years ago that I learned my mother hated those meals and even the mere mention of them because they reminded her of the hardships and all the things she wanted to get us but wasn’t able to provide. We weren’t made aware until much later that my mother had to make the decision between food or diapers when we were very young, trying at times to wash diapers for re-use or turning towels into makeshift diapers until her next paycheck.

My mother is an incredible person who was able to navigate us through the harshest of situations, but she’s still a person. There were many times when she would sit us down with tears in her eyes and explain the predatory nature of some of these programs. “You have to make enough to prove that you’re trying, but not too much because they’ll kick you off even if you still need some help.” So it was best if we figured out a way to be successful enough not to get caught in the trap.

While white friends of mine who came from financially stable households bragged about how much they were getting from food stamps/SNAP in college, I ate one meal a day after the scholarship or loan money ran out. Even though I had two jobs for the majority of my college experience, I only made enough to buy books and pay rent when the dorms became too expensive. I simply went without, unlike my peers who didn’t grow up with the fear of being ensnared by government assistance.

After college I continued to fight through my own ebbs and flows with financial stability, sometimes working one full time and one part time job to make ends meet. It wasn’t until I started dating and moved in with the father of my child that I felt relaxed enough with two incomes to begin to let go of the financial trauma from my childhood and start enjoying money in a way that didn’t instantly fill me with buyer’s remorse.

We often took trips to Cincinnati, Nashville, New York, and my favorite place in the entire world, New Orleans. I’d gone from being bewildered about how my peers could travel to visiting New Orleans about three or four times within a three-year time frame. I thought that this is what success looked like. I finally felt like an adult, that I’d achieved the true financial freedom you can achieve with a partner.

That freedom didn’t last long. As our relationship continued, the control my ex needed over me grew stronger. “Allowing” me to quit a job because of ongoing harassment I was continuously experiencing from a co-worker that, along with the stress of being in a controlling relationship, led me to a stay in a mental health facility. He encouraged me to take as much time as I needed away from work because he would be able to provide for the three of us.

Him offering to take over all our financial responsibilities so I could put myself back together again seemed like such a dream at the time. Until he would punish me by taking away the car or the clothes he’d given me whenever we got into an argument. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s an example of financial abuse. It took me a very long time to understand that not only was it not acceptable simply because he made the money, but it was also a glaring red flag signalling for me to escape.

Leaving during COVID was a blessing in disguise for a number of reasons: One, so many people were realizing that the relationships they were in no longer suited them, so it wasn’t as scandalous to hear about a couple ending things. Two, the stimulus checks provided me with enough money to cover the first month’s rent, the security deposit, and new furniture for my new rental home. I purposefully allowed my partner to keep the house we were living in as is, even though some of the items were mine long before I met him, so our child could have some semblance of normalcy.

Shortly after moving in, I was offered a contract remote marketing position with the same organization I had left after they made good on their promise that I would in no way be in contact with my former coworker who had caused so much harm. That position gave me the confidence to find another more permanent role after my contract had ended. I finally had the “dream job” of working in an advertising agency. This, I thought at the time, was going to be the thing that would give me the financial security I’d been seeking my entire life.

Before I worked at the ad agency, I thought the job was going to be a fully collaborative explosion of creativity and teamwork. I envisioned a space that valued different thought processes and ideas. A place to push the boundaries of what marketing looked like. I can’t speak for all ad agencies, but this, unfortunately, was not my experience. It seemed as if every meeting boiled down to “How can we as an alcohol brand make non-drinkers drink and drinkers drink more?” or “How can we make people believe our evil company is less evil?” Although I was included in creative meetings, my thoughts weren’t considered as they came from the mouth and mind of a person who didn’t look like the brand’s target audience or the others in the room.

At this point I’d started looking into buying a home because the government had temporarily stopped penalizing people with public student loan debt. I was coming up on a year in my rental property and knew the landlords had plans to raise the rent that I was barely able to cover even with my full-time job. I reached out to a former boss for help finding a new job when he suggested I apply for a small environmental nonprofit covering natural and manmade disasters in several states in the American South. I was offered the role and my bid was accepted for my new home within the same week.

When I put in my notice at the ad agency, the IT manager, who was responsible for setting a date and time for me to drop off my work laptop, asked me when my last day was and when I’d be starting my new job. When he realized those two dates were a day apart, he made a joke about how I must have been dying to start working because I didn’t even give myself a break. I very seriously looked at him and told him I couldn’t afford to do that. The thought had never occurred to him.

My time working for the environmental nonprofit was bittersweet. I aided in the direct help of people who were currently dealing with the fallout of an environmental crisis by supplying information or providing the space for them to tell their heartbreaking story as a warning to others who may not have been prepared. On the flip side of that, I dealt with the brunt of having a boss who, although she believed in me and my work, often let the pressures of running a small three-person (and later two-person) organization get the best of her. She lost her cool in moments of panic and stress. I was the only person on the receiving end of her outbursts.

A week after she extended my contract another year, giving me both a raise and a role title change, she notified me that the organization had officially run out of money. In a month’s time, I would need to find something new. So a little over a year after becoming a homeowner, I was jobless and depressed.

Our society doesn’t do a decent enough job of educating people about workplace abuse and how the harm doesn’t magically end when the job does. Much like financial trauma, it follows you wherever you go unless you have the resources to break the cycle. Feeling defeated, I began working at a restaurant as a server to make some money to cover bills and clothing for my child while I applied for COVID mortgage assistance relief and SNAP. As soon as I was approved, the countdown started for me to find a job that paid enough to allow me to survive.

I spent the next year applying to hundreds and hundreds of jobs, some I knew I was overqualified for, just to get a generic “Sorry but we went with an applicant that was better aligned to the position” email, if I even got anything at all. I had never felt more pathetic in my life.

Being broke when you’re younger can bond you and make your connection with others closer through sharing anecdotes about showing up to college events because you know they’ll offer free T-shirts and, if you’re really lucky, free food. But being poor stops being acceptable after a certain age. It’s only comfortable to talk about being broke when you can’t eat at the restaurant you really want to try or you can only get the cheaper gym membership and not the oneswith the extra perks.

It feels like no one wants to hear that you can’t afford to pay your electricity or that you’re falling behind on your mortgage. It’s as if mentioning your financial struggles is contagious and whoever you’re sharing this with will catch it if they listen too hard or too closely. Being broke, truly broke, is an isolating, painful experience that most bear the burden of alone.

I felt like I was drowning in my own misery, loneliness, and stress. I was at the end of my mortgage assistance, and I hadn’t landed a single job. I started to feel a deep ache in my chest and wondered if this was going to be the thing that killed me. If this was going to be the one time I wasn’t able to pull myself and my child through.

Eventually, I was able to pivot and started my own business to help small companies with their marketing needs. When that ended, I began working at a local independent bookstore. While these roles helped and are helping to keep me somewhat afloat, I still don’t make enough to survive on. After hundreds more job applications, I still haven’t been successful in finding a full-time role.

The fear of losing my home and the ability to take care of myself and my child is ever-present. It wakes me up in the middle of a peaceful night of sleep. It demands to be consulted whenever I schedule a job interview, questioning the odds of whether or not I’ll actually get the job so as to not waste gas on an opportunity that may not pan out. It prevents me from making future plans as I have no idea when this situation will change and I’ll be able to thrive.

One of the biggest blessings throughout all of this was my access to SNAP. No matter how humiliating and cruel the application process and required documents for renewal are, it means that my child and I will always have food. It was the one thing I thought I could count on when I needed it. And now, I don’t even have that.

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Tajah McQueen is a mother of two, one human and one Persian cat. Unless you ask the streets, where she is also considered mother. Bookseller by day, tv watcher by night. Reluctant activist.

I didn’t remember the online application for SNAP being this labor intensive the last time I applied for food stamps, about five years ago. Or was it six? It’s hard to say; my traumatized, ADHD, PTSD-riddled brain has a hard time gauging time and my memory is full of holes. What I did know about time was that I waited until it was almost too late to ask for help, every time, because I’m convinced I can fix any situation on my own. This time, it was my therapist who said to me: “Lara, you can’t continue to spend $600 a month on food for the four of you! You’re going to need to stop grocery shopping and start finding your local food pantries!” And I remember thinking: Surely not! Surely not food pantries! It’s not that bad yet, is it?

I had been on food stamps, which was hard enough to swallow. But to have to say out loud that I got something from the food pantry? How embarrassing. It screams “I am at the bottom! I have to ask for free food in order to feed my kids because we are dirt poor!” I don’t know for sure that my kids were embarrassed, but at first they all refused to go with me to the food pantries. Which was a two-fold problem.

With my PTSD, which my kids also have, I have mild agoraphobia. It’s common in PTSD sufferers; we just feel vulnerable being out and about, like anyone can “get us” from any side. I have a strong aversion to strange men while out in public as well. I haven’t gone out to grocery shop in probably 10 years. I loved grocery delivery when it became available in my area, and when I couldn’t afford that, I began doing curbside pick-ups. But food pantries require me to go in, interact with people, push a cart around, and make selections.

The second part of my problem with shopping had to do with my health. My body had been, well, shutting down over the last year. Every ache and pain and dysfunction was attributed to my PTSD for a long time. I’ve had “fatigue” on my medical chart since 2018, and none of my doctors were doing anything about it. Then for the past 15 months or so, my blood pressure had steadily gone up after a lifetime of normal—low even!—blood pressure. It was causing light-headedness, dizziness, nausea, cold sweats.

I was utterly physically exhausted with the least bit of exertion. My pulse would be flagged by my watch, warning that my heart rate was over 110. I would sweat, starting with my face, then my scalp and neck, before sweat would be running down my back. I felt so gross. I wanted someone to go with me in case one of these “episodes” happened to me while I was out. So I started making one of my three teens go with me.

Now, luckily, the food pantries I‘ve found are tiny little places without glaring overhead lights. I’m able to zip through in about 15 minutes and head home. But it was still an adjustment after so many years of avoiding going out and shopping.

There were more problems I faced: I was having worse and worse stomach issues. I felt like no matter what I ate, I got a stomachache. The rosacea on my face kept flaring bright red, despite regular use of medicated cream. My joints ached, especially my hands, which made using the computer for my work as a freelance writer and graphic designer difficult. My migraines, after more than three years in remission, had returned. My lab results were all over the place, with more than half of them returning with an “abnormal” label.

Finally, in March 2025, it was noted that my iron was way lower than it should be. My vitamin D was deficient. My vitamin B12 was so low as to be useless while still in the “green” or normal range. Iron pills, after three months of taking them, had raised my iron by one whole point. I still felt awful. My new hematologist decided immediately that I needed iron infusions. He put me on vitamin B12. My endocrinologist put me on vitamin D. I felt marginally better but still, leaving the house at all was exhausting. I finally had my first iron infusion on October 16th. It will take four to six weeks for my body to process the infusion and finally start to feel better. In the meantime, no iron pills, and I’m so exhausted, I’m back to daily napping. At least food stamps allowed me to shop from home.

In September 2025, I was put on MCAS protocols. MCAS, or mast cell activation syndrome, is a disturbance in how your body reacts to virtually any stimulant to your system. It could be allergies indoors or outdoors, it could be changes in temperature including showering with water that’s too hot, it could be your clothing detergent, or smelling a chemical smell. Or, it could be from what you eat.

Reactions are basically the release of histamine in inappropriate levels. This can happen at any point in the process of your body reacting to a stimulant. It’s very complicated and hard to understand let alone explain. You can test normal across blood tests, for different allergies, but this inappropriate immune response with histamine isn’t going to show up on regular blood tests. It’s hard to catch, hard to diagnose. But I had all the co-morbid diagnoses and lab results that pointed to MCAS.

So I’m now on a low histamine diet. I take H1 and H2 antihistamines, which means your standard 24-hour non-drowsy antihistamine med twice a day. Histamine-blocking nasal spray twice a day. Histamine eye drops before bed. And this is just a basic protocol, it doesn’t include MCAS-specific meds.

Histamines are throughout your body. When you eat high histamine foods—and there are conflicting lists all over the internet on what foods are considered high histamine—it can cause an “MCAS flare,” which is different for every single person. Alternately, you can eat “histamine liberators,” which are foods that aren’t themselves high in histamine, but when they hit your stomach, they tell histamines to release into your system. MCAS flares are often caused by foods that people are commonly allergic to like strawberries, nuts, and dairy. It’s all hit or miss. A food I eat for weeks that makes its way onto my “safe” list might suddenly cause a reaction. You can become sensitive at any moment. The reaction can be mild, not look like an allergic reaction at all, like throwing up and a fever, or it can be a full blown anaphylactic reaction. Selecting foods becomes a minefield.

In October, I was diagnosed with POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. My blood pressure rising, the dizziness, the high pulse: all symptoms of POTS. Suddenly, getting my blood pressure under control became very important. I just started blood pressure meds so my energy levels are variant, exertion is problematic, and virtually anything can cause an MCAS flare.

I also have type 2 diabetes, so I’m on a low carb, low sugar, low histamine diet. Fun times. The MCAS diet requires that I avoid a laundry list of items you probably consume on a regular basis: no eating refrigerated leftovers, no canned food, no citric foods or citric acid, no processed meats, and no hard or aged cheeses, just to name a few things. The “no” list feels impossibly long some days. I now know I’m sensitive to wheat and any soybean products. Tomatoes are a no, potatoes are a yes. No chocolate, but I can use caramel syrup for sweets cravings on low carb ice cream. Neither of which are available at food pantries, as you might imagine. So basically, I don’t have any desserts or sweets available to me if I’m not on food stamps. No treats at all, no break in the consumption of savory items.

To say eating is problematic is an understatement. I have to monitor my energy throughout the day and decide if I have the energy to make a meal. Because 90% of what I eat has to be cooked or fixed from fresh foods, I’m making three meals a day basically from scratch. Getting up from my desk or the couch and walking to the kitchen to make meals can cause an immediate rise in my pulse and body temperature. I might make it to the kitchen and have to sit at the table, monitoring my pulse until it calms down. Sometimes all I can do is lay on the couch and sleep for two to four hours, so that my pulse is normal again when I wake up.

By then, my stomach might be growling loudly and painfully. I have to rethink what I was going to fix. I can eat macaroni and cheese from a box with no impact, thankfully, and it’s what I often turn to when I have episodes like this that suck my energy dry. In the mornings, I often get sweaty and tired very quickly. Some mornings, I sit down a lot. I may have gone down to the kitchen with the intention of making eggs, a favorite safe food of mine, but only after I feed the two cats and the dog, open all the shades on the main floor, do what remnants of dishes are sitting in the sink, do my asthma treatment, take my blood sugar, take my blood pressure, take my liquid B12, refill my large water bottle, refill the ice trays and water filter system we use, I’m ready to sit down. By then, I’m thinking: cold cereal sounds good. I can eat rice or corn-based cereal, and thankfully dairy doesn’t cause issues for me.

Food is something I think about and deal with hourly. Running to two different food pantries weekly takes a lot of my energy. I’m still working, I’m in grad school, I’m trying to keep the roof over my family’s head, which has become increasingly difficult with my uneven energy levels. A lot of my safe foods are fresh fruits and vegetables, which are nearly impossible to get at food pantries. There are loads of canned options, but since I can’t eat canned foods due to histamine levels, those are no help.

I can’t use my slow cooker anymore because slow cooking, even on a stove top, increases histamine levels in foods. So every meal is made from scratch. Some days I’m desperate for something easy to make. Putting together limited ingredients from a food pantry is also difficult for my ADHD brain with executive dysfunction. My ADHD family struggles with textures and smells, and often we already have limited food options before being forced into food pantries. Favorite foods becoming suddenly unavailable can really derail our daily routines and eating habits. Even though my kids are older teens, change is difficult for neurodivergent brains. They finally started going with me to the food pantries so they could see their options and make some choices.

If food pantries are my only option, my food selections become very, very slim. Low carb and gluten-free options don’t exist. I start eating a lot of the same things over and over. Which isn’t good for my weight, my diabetes, or my overall health.

Getting SNAP in September was such a relief. I could get fresh vegetables and fruit in good shape. I could go back to working more hours since I wasn’t having to run to food pantries on the regular. My kids’ favorite foods were available to them for the first time in six months. It was like the household let out a deep sigh.

But it was short-lived. I’m writing this on November 2, 2025. There are people fighting at the federal level to get the administration to fund food stamps again. In the meantime, I have $178 left of my last food stamp deposit. I’m holding out for frozen pizza, for an easy Friday night dinner, butter, and organic milk, which has a later expiration date and lasts longer. How many of each of those can I get for $178? Would you do the math? I’m exhausted.

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Lara McKusky is a neurodivergent nonfiction and speculative fiction writer whose work examines poverty, feminism, and contemporary philosophy through both lived experience and research. As a freelance business consultant and graphic designer, she specializes in serving unique small businesses while raising three teenagers as a single mother. Her essays dissect the labyrinths of America’s social safety net and the compounding effects of chronic illness on personal financial stability. Her fiction similarly explores power, survival, and resistance. Whether writing personal narrative or building fantastical worlds, she brings an interrogative lens to systemic inequities and the philosophical underpinnings of modern life.

I needed a job. In four hours, I cobbled together a resume, pieced together from my 12-year-old curriculum vitae, a document assembled in my final year of grad school studying creative writing. I needed my own income. I’d been denied it the ability to work outside the home since I became a mother. Since I married, really.

My MFA was meant to open the door to teaching at a college level. Instead, I’d used my student loans and scholarships and work income during college to house and feed not just myself, but my husband. Then I’d made his babies. Every time I mentioned how much I’d like to work and build my career, he’d argue that “it just didn’t make sense.” I wouldn’t get paid enough to offset the cost of childcare. And we wouldn’t know the people taking care of our kids. I stayed in the house. I mothered full-time. After 12 years, I made some discoveries about both my husband and myself. I needed a job so I could leave.

We married at 18, both of us products of conservative religious teachings, such as: You can’t have sex until you pledge your lives together under God. Men marry women. Women marry men. Sex is between a man and a woman. Specific to my upbringing and upheld in our relationship: Women are meant to service men. Also, sex is inevitable if you date—so no dating. Just marriage. Better hurry up then. Plus there was my need to escape my abusive natal home, the only articulated path to which was finding a husband.

I picked someone with what seemed like a healthy life. His parents didn’t fight. They managed their ample dual income well. Their home was always clean. White. Two kids, boy and girl. Upper middle class. Midwestern.

My family life was chaotic. Messy. Brown.

I was marrying up, right? I was marrying into whiteness and security. I believed I’d found someone who would be a partner. After all, in his home I was welcomed and fed. No one yelled. No one got hit. Everyone had access to what they needed when they needed it. His parents took me to see colleges. His mom brought me swimming and toured every bookstore she could find with me. They bought me a laptop when I started my undergraduate studies. They had gifts for me under the tree every Christmas. And later, that first year of college, they paid off my credit card bill when my husband ran it up over $600. That was the first time he took my money.

Years later, I kept money for my allotted spending in an envelope taped in a kitchen cabinet. I’d slip a $20 bill inside during Target runs, choosing the cash back option to make sure I got the money before it vanished. I learned that if it was “available” in our joint account, he would spend it even if it was clear I hadn’t received my agreed-on portion. This included the savings I’d created over years to take our kids to meet my family in Lebanon. But during the war in 2006, he decided the money shouldn’t just sit there. Lebanon was too unstable. I probably wouldn’t be able to go anyway, not safely. He had access to the account and that was that. My savings disappeared.

Every month, I dipped into our dwindling join savings to cover his personal spending budget overages. I kept spreadsheets and tracked all purchases. He bought himself video games, new tech, and lunches out, even though I packed his lunches for him. Even though I used either Saturday or Sunday every weekend on meal prep for our family of five to keep our spending at or below what he brought home.

I begged him to eat the meals I made. To stop going over budget. He told me “we” could figure it out. That man had never denied himself anything, but he denied me everything. All I was allowed was healthcare, the need for which he still weaponizes by calling me “crazy” in front of our children.

So I needed a job. I opened my own bank account. I put in applications and interviewed. I updated him on my newly limited availability, letting him know he’d need to pitch in more with the kids and the house. All of this was a predecessor to a realization that ended our relationship: My ex and I had both been dating. We both had girlfriends. I’d thought I might be bisexual, but my experience in a female-female relationship made me realize I would never be happy with a cis man again. I began the simultaneous processes of feeling out my queerness and determining the value of half our household assets so I could move out and move on.

He told me I could stay. He offered to keep me on his health insurance. To let me live in the same house with our kids. He would house and feed me on his income. I just needed to continue the childcare, cleaning, and cooking. I knew what this meant: I would be a live-in servant. I’d remain trapped because by choosing to stay, I’d be sacrificing my financial freedom. By choosing to leave, I’d be choosing poverty.

And I almost did it. I tried. I wanted to be close to the kids. Plus, there was this moment that felt sweet at the time. We stood together in what we called the library, a den we’d installed a wall of bookcases in. It was the room I’d moved into when I left our marital bed. We were talking about how we never imagined our marriage ending. The sun was shining through the picture windows on us. He told me he wanted better for me. We were smiling. He swept his arm around like a wizard. “I free you from the patriarchy,” he said, and it meant something to me to hear that. A newly-realized queer, brown woman trying to find her place in a white man’s world. He meant it, and I believed he would continue to mean it. After all, we’d been best friends for nearly 20 years.

I truly might have stayed, but it took over a month to convince him I should be allowed to have doors on the room I moved myself into (formerly our library). Doors were too expensive, he said. Then, once he agreed and installed them, he wouldn’t let me keep them closed. I wasn’t allowed to stop people from entering, using my bathroom, or even sitting on my bed. He told me it “didn’t make sense” for the room to no longer be accessible to everyone when it always had been before. He brought his dates there after work. He shot down my suggestion we turn the outbuilding into a space where I could live, although he did so within a year of me leaving and moved our 13-year-old son into it.

After we divorced, it took him three years to remove his debt from my credit card. He didn’t pay the small court-mandated child support (about $10 a month) because it “was ridiculous.” I was in poverty, working 36 hours a week as a barista until COVID-19, and then scrambling for remote employment while juggling a barista-related disability. I needed every penny, even if he saw the amount as ultimately minuscule. Yet I let him convince me to waive his arrears and state we didn’t need to pay each other going forward in order to end a by-the-hour mediation I couldn’t afford. Then he abused our negotiated custody agreement without compensating me even though he made more than four times what I did per month. Finally, he came after me for child support with a high-end law firm when I moved out of state to escape him. Even though I haven’t been able to level up my income due to my time as a stay-at-home mom caring for our children—a choice we made in order to make ends meet by not paying for childcare while he grew his work experience and income.

I’ll explain something here: When I say “escape him,” I mean him cornering me and accusing me of something every time we swapped the kids. Anything. He’d grown angry. In response, I’d grown shifty and avoidant. That validated his anger, it seemed, and those by-the-car “conversations” grew crueler and more intense. I would shake for hours afterward. My partner (now my wife) told me not to let him talk to me, but I didn’t know how to cut off the man I’d been convinced knew more than me.

Finally, my therapist encouraged me to relocate like I’d always wanted to. She told me to stop talking to him in person. Suggested his tactics were narcissistic. That I should only communicate with him in writing. The first lawyer I hired said the same, offering to handle all communication on my behalf, but I couldn’t afford that. The next lawyer I was able to retain two years later read some of his communications and insisted I not speak to him outside of writing at all. His behavior needed to be on record. More importantly, I needed to keep myself emotionally safe.

Once, in a moment of weakness, I overshared that I was struggling financially. He suggested we meet up. I thought he wanted to discuss a more equitable financial arrangement, perhaps opt in to paying child support or allow me to opt out of paying it. This was when I was still trying to fulfill the “amicable” part of our divorce agreement. Before I gave up.

When we sat down, he began to tell me how to manage my money. I cut him off, fighting back tears of rage. How dare he? The man who overspent every year we lived together. He might know what a budget was, but he’d never applied one. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know how to manage money; the leap my credit score took as soon as we were no longer financially connected attested to that. It was that I didn’t have access to money. I’m a brown, queer woman in this xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, post-capitalist timeline. Remember? Didn’t he recognize that and free me from the patriarchy?

Still, it would take another cruel exchange for me to fully see him for what he was. One I’d bet he doesn’t even remember, because it was simple to him. Obvious. He told me in the gentle, patronizing tone he’d always used when letting me know I was wrong that my “being poor” was my choice. I could have stayed. He’d offered, hadn’t he? I could be financially comfortable now if I’d remained in his home. He made no mention of how years of gendered violence against women by the state had a role in my inability to compete for jobs in a depressed economy. He was oblivious to the fact that me staying in the home while he worked built up 12 years of strikes against me while his career bloomed. He neglected to take into account that I am visibly brown, and even told our children I’m white because the U.S. census says Middle Easterners are Caucasian.

His cis/white/hetero/male privilege was on full display. I was horrified to realize I’d spent so many years loving and caring for this person who not only didn’t comprehend how much the patriarchy was at fault for my financial difficulty, but felt justified in his own complicity. All of this ran through my mind, yet I said nothing to him. Just shut down and stared blankly, a good, quiet woman holding in my scream.

I’ve been four states away for almost four years and I’ve only just begun to break free of his financial hold. It wouldn’t have happened for another five years except our middle child got tired of him blatantly catering to our eldest and only son. She decided to graduate high school early and came to live with me for her first year of college. This means I now receive the child support. But I had to do the legwork of getting the state child support tracking system number to which he can pay it.

Next year, our youngest will move here, too. They are also tired of the favoritism, of men being prioritized over everyone else. My ex-husband makes over four times what I do. Still, I’ve managed to afford child support, live within my means, and haven’t overdrawn an account since we divorced. I’ve even accrued a small savings. And I don’t have to hide money from my wife to make it happen.

That first job was me setting a boundary that led to my escape. The jobs I’ve had since are me building the life I deserve—one where I feel safe, secure, and valued beyond my ability to rear children, prepare food, or keep a house clean so that a man can leave it behind every day, work in a field he loves, and buy himself whatever he wants whenever he wants it.

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is a brown, queer, Durham-based writer and instructor whose work prioritizes the engagement of difficult topics. After recognizing the personal benefits of writing for release and recovery, she has made her practice public for the last 15 years, offering courses independently as well as through the . Her work has appeared in Verywell Mind, Survivor Lit, Exit 7, [wherever], The Archipelago, and The Manifest-Station.

It ought to be a crime for any landlord to evict a tenant from their home where they have lived for 35 years.

That’s what happened to me in September 2023. I was a perfect tenant—neat, clean, quiet. I’d always paid rent on time and in cash. In addition, I paid for all maintenance costs during those years, including plumbers, electricians, cesspool clean out, lawn care, and more.

Additionally, over the time I lived there, I upgraded the property, both inside and out, for a cost of about $50,000. I replaced ancient kitchen appliances, bathroom fixtures, and installed a ceramic tile floor. I had hardwood flooring put down on the first floor and painted the exterior of the dwelling twice by myself. I painted indoor walls twice, too. I also removed the old barn doors on the front of the place (a converted garage) and had a thermal glass slider put in.

I enclosed the huge, ugly propane gas tanks behind a tall, wooden fence, landscaped the barren property with pine trees, forsythia bushes, hydrangea bushes, beach grass, and other flourishes, then hired professional gardeners to design and plant two small flower gardens, both adjacent to the front door.

When Covid hit in March 2020, my town quadrupled in size, as many New York City second home owners escaped to the country where they deemed it to be much safer.

In the ensuing four years, the rents in the Hamptons have skyrocketed Then my greedy landlord approached me to say he wanted me out. He needed to get $3,000 a month for the place. Of course I couldn’t pay that living on Social Security benefits. (All my IRA accounts had been depleted when the owner increased my rent by 55% in 2019.)

A lengthy court case was settled last August. I was given three weeks to vacate the premises.

In my late seventies, divorced, childless, with all close relatives deceased and my closest friend in assisted living suffering dementia, I was essentially alone with no one to help me with the monumental task of moving. Since I couldn’t afford to pay for movers or storage space for my possessions, I lost everything. I walked away with a few pieces of clothing and my jewelry box, leaving behind most of my furniture, appliances, dishware and other things I couldn’t sell or give away to various charities. 

To backtrack several years, my younger half-sister in Albany had been begging me to move in with her and her husband, paying an equivalent rent to them, for a room above their garage. I declined repeatedly as I loved the darling cottage I had created along Alewives Creek in Southampton Town’s North Sea area. After all, I lived in the beautiful Hamptons, near world-famous beaches. Why would I ever leave?    

Yet when I was going through the months-long eviction process with the courts, my sister suddenly lost interest in boarding me in my senior years. She refused to assist me in any way and wouldn’t allow me to send my possessions up to Albany for temporary storage in her garage. She insisted that she needed it for her car.

So, impulsively, I made quick arrangements to move back to my hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. A lifelong family friend offered me a room in his three bedroom home until I got settled. Or so he said.

I flew to Des Moines. The man’s welcome lasted exactly twelve hours. When he returned home from work the following afternoon, he threatened to send me to a homeless shelter if I didn’t leave immediately. Why, I never found out. I called the police. They came. Tempers were high, my “friend” was furious, and he drove me to a Days Inn across town. I stayed for two or three weeks. Friends and people I’d known for over 60 years shunned me. No one called me. No one visited me. No one invited me to their homes. I was appalled at their indifference, their complete lack of empathy for my circumstances.

By this time, my money was running low. I had no other choice than to phone my sister and ask to be taken in. She agreed, but grudgingly.

 With no other choice, I moved into the room above her garage in a state of insecurity and complete panic at what I would find there.

I’d love to say that I was welcomed with open arms, that the room was lovely, but it was a cluttered mess. I felt like a prisoner in a cell up in no man’s land. My sister hadn’t even stocked her fridge with food, my bathroom shower didn’t function, and I had to sleep on an air mattress!

My sister put in a space heater but told me I had to unplug it every time I went downstairs. Furthermore, there was no telephone line or wifi connection in my room. If I took the portable phone upstairs, I lost power within minutes of calling people.

Just days after I’d settled in as best I could, she interrupted me one weekend night to say, “We have to talk.”

Once again, I was subjected to verbal abuse, criticism, threats of being thrown out, and complete indifference to me, my situation, and my future.

The next morning, five cops escorted me to the Hampton Inn a mile or so from my sister’s home.

Over the next month, I emailed and phoned hundreds of people about area rentals. I made endless calls to Albany’s Social Services for assistance, all for naught.

In the end, I phoned almost everyone I’d known during my forty-year residence in Southampton. Finally, I found a woman who would rent me a room. I returned in November 2023.

Now the woman wants me to leave, so I’m going through my fourth eviction in fourteen months.

I can’t believe this is my life….at 78!

I’ve placed ads in the newspapers for a room to rent but have gotten only a handful of responses. Even room rentals are up to over $1,200 a month, well beyond what I can afford. One woman actually asked me to pay for renovations on her gutted bedroom and bathroom. Another had a camper to rent…for $1,900 a month. Several calls have been from others needing rooms! Can’t they read?    

The situation is dire. Just about everyone here is now motivated by greed. Most real estate agents are only interested in high-rate rentals and/or multi-million dollar home sales. A 660 square foot home located in Sag Harbor is listed for $1.3 million. Oh, it features an attached garage. Most hotel rooms are $550 a night or higher.

When I moved to Southampton forty years ago to write children’s books, it was a beautiful village by the sea, long inhabited by local homeowners and business owners. It was a desirable and affordable place to live. How it has changed over the years! It’s now a playground for the utlra-rich. Modest older homes are being torn down and replaced with mega-mansions that take up the entire property. Stores sell overpriced goods, like $565 sweatshirts. Food prices have soared.

I’ve been on a list for an affordable Hamptons apartment for over four years. The woman who manages the list won’t even tell me where I stand. Last week I applied to three more complexes. Why the town social worker didn’t inform me of these other places or get me the applications sooner is anybody’s guess.

Most people say that I’m not alone, that my problem is “not unique.”    

These words aren’t comforting in the slightest. At this point, all I can do is trust in the universe. And wait.

Open Secrets Magazine editor Rachel Kramer Bussel has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for senior Dianne Moritz to find new housing as she faces eviction.

https://gofund.me/d3f8d084

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Dianne Moritz, a former teacher in Los Angeles, is a bestselling picture book author with five published books, hundreds of poems for kids, and poetry, essays and memoir pieces for adults. Her book, 1, 2, 3 By the Sea, has sold over 100,000 copies and is still selling after ten years. She has joined the ranks of Chicken Soup authors, with her essay “The Late Bloomer,” in their book, Just Say Yes, released in July 2024. Follow Dianne on Facebook.