I don’t feel well when I am around affluent city crowds. I feel unimportant and left out of mainstream life. The saving grace is that I am loved by friends and family. I am also going through depression and that is another factor. I have the theory that my experience with crowds is due to my depression.
In reply I say that I have a car, a computer, a steady job, and enough love.
Crowds raise a lot of questions for me.
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I made good money and still got schizoaffective disorder. Money won’t save your soul.
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My goal in life is to live comfortably. That of course has different meanings for different people but for me it is having a loving family, having my pets, a good job, and enough money that I can always pay my expenses and then a few treats now and then. I don’t expect to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. I would actually consider myself middle class but lower middle class. I’m happy with this. But it requires a lot of hard work and sometimes stress on my behalf to try and maintain this. The schizophrenia has certainly put a halt in my aspirations and dreams. I used to want to be a doctor but I guess that’ll never happen.
I grew up in poverty, grew up being jealous of my middle-class peers. I figured they didn’t know how good they had it. There may be some truth to that. Hell, I still live in poverty, have lived in ghettos most of my adult life (as well as my adolescence), but I’m past the jealousy.
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You’re right, people from higher classes don’t know how good they’ve got it. I have actually lived in poverty myself. I remember living in this run down room that flooded everytime it rained, got eaten alive by mosquitoes because there wasn’t flyscreen on the windows and only having enough money to eat one meal a day. The bed was black with mould and the whole place stuck like a swamp. It took a lot of work to get where i am now but i still remember back to those days and have an appreciation for people doing it tough. That’s why i’m a firm believer in offering more support to people who actually need it, and less welfare support for the middle and upper classes. However, before i had this experience, i had no idea how tough it was. Took the lived experience to appreciate it.
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Yeah, I worked hard through MI to get a master’s degree in biology, I teach as an adjunct professor at a community college, and I still live impoverished in a ghetto. My apartment isn’t as bad as what you described, though I’ve lived in some really bad places in the past. It’s just an awful neighborhood, nothing unusual to hear gunshots, etc. I feel trapped here. Every summer when my lease runs out I don’t have the money to move, so I sign a new damn lease. Ugh, I’ll never get out of the ■■■■■■■ ghetto.
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Sounds absolutely terrible! I at least got out of my situation, it must be awful to feel trapped in yours. Does you job not pay you enough to move? Or do you have a large student debt that’s eating up your income?
The job just doesn’t pay enough. I normally work a side job, but currently don’t have one, putting applications out there, though. I have a terrible amount of student debt, much of it from doing a year at a private med school (2002-2003) and all the interest that has accrued since then, but I’m on an “income-driven repayment plan.” I pay less than $100/month on my consolidation loan, not even enough to cover the interest, but oh well.
What kind of work are you doing, @Here4You?
It is terrible the amount of student debt you Americans have to shoulder. I shudder to think how much my degree would have cost me. I just finished paying mine off last year. Took me 6 years i think in total of working full time. Our repayments are based on income, so i was paying 6.6% of my income toward it i think. Sucks that your job doesn’t pay enough. You’d think with your kind of work that you would earn enough to at least get out of the ghetto. I hope that you do one day.
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Just curious, do you live in Australia? I only ask because I have an Australian friend who pays a percentage of her income as her payment toward her student debt. It would be nice if it was like that in America.
A couple days ago I looked at my former med school’s web site and saw they’re now charging over $50k/year tuition to their med students, ridiculous.
Yes i live in Australia. Our education is still heavily subsidised by the government so our student debts aren’t so high. And our general sentiment here in Australia is that is how it should be. We like our government having some responsibilities. Anyway…to avoid making this political.
They are charging $50 k / year for medical students!!! That is absolutely outrageous! You would be hard pressed to rack up $50 k IN TOTAL as your student debt here in Australia. Sounds like even your doctors would be living in the ghetto. Wow, what a contrast in countries.
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Are you jealous of the middle class or the well-to-do?
I was raised in a middle class family. Went to private boarding school. My father could be described as upper middle class . Due to chronic ,severe mental illness I’ve drifted down the social scale.
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My dad is middle class and my mom married a man who is middle class. I’m poor by definition. I lived in the ghetto before. I hated it. I’m blessed to be back home. I want to work and be middle to upper class as a computer programmer someday. I’m studying on my own. I blamed the illness, but I’m not jealous. I live comfortably.
My mum says class is my big problem in life because I’m not educated so can’t hold fancy conversations and I do not fit in with any class or feel I belong to any class.
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Being raised upper middle class ■■■■■■ me up. I would have been better off being middle class but I feel I’m a unique situation. My mom grew up really poor. My grandpa on my dads side grew up very poor. But we’ve gotten more affluent over the years. I wouldn’t trade it based on my mental illness situation but I feel like people took advantage of me a lot and abused me a ton shitload just cuz my parents have money. Grass is always greener they say u know. But I think in the long term I’ll be better off. But I had a really bad experiences from like 18-25 based on socioeconomic things. Lots of abuse and terror in my life. No one understood me cuz I was schizophrenic. Kids are mean In general. Rich skateboarding punk high school kids who have everything they ever need are ■■■■■■■ douchepricks. I’m not sure if kids from inner city are any better but middle class seems like a healthy medium, for me at least. I grew up in like the worst town to be schizophrenic in terms of what it does to your image. Yep it’s better than being homeless. But I see disadvantages on my side as well.
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We came to Canada with almost nothing in the mid sixties. But we bought a house with a huge backyard for only $10,000. But the greedy world changed that. Now the lot is used for 2 houses that are in the range of over 2 million dollars each.
We in a way were bought out. To go from $10,000 to over 4million dollars seems damn crazy to me.
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I have decided it is wrong to be jealous of others. It can be destructive. It is a form of hate, I would say. So from now on I am going to try to see others without being jealous.
I read all of your comments and I appreciate your input.
You know, I am not really poor. I look above me and see that, but also I look below me and see that too. The moral of the story is that money is not everything. It seems our money is determined by fate.
I have 50 dollars in my back account