Stumbling

Hello, I am your statistic for today.

I am a statistic.

I am thirty years old and have three girls under the age of nine. Though not on welfare currently, I have been in years past. I struggle to get by, unable to pay all of my bills on time, getting raped at every financial institution that runs credit checks thanks to an embarrassingly bad score.

I am a statistic. I was abused growing up, as were many. I was molested, beaten and abandoned. At the age of three, I watched my mother leave out of the bedroom window at my grandparents house and she didn’t come back for several years. She came back married and addicted to pain medication, remaining a hypochondriac for the rest of her life. I left home as fast as possible after graduation and married a man just like her, therefore struggling through an intensely abusive married life for two years before leaving, pregnant with his second child, to live in a domestic violence shelter with my oldest daughter at eleven months old.

I have been the woman in the grocery store that you hate. The one whose kids are out of control and screaming. The one who pays with a food stamp card while her children beg for candy off the racks. The one who has insufficient funds in her account when trying to run a check through for groceries, holding you up from purchasing the couple of items you will buy with your platinum visa card.

I am the statistic that has been blamed and noted in the cause of welfare reform, on both sides of the issue. I am the woman who was left behind to mind her own issues when no one else could help her manage them. I am the stubborn, victimized, helpless, fearful and anxious woman. I am a cause all in myself!

I have a story to tell. There are women who need to hear it; women who need to know that they are not alone, that they are strong, empowered and capable of changing their lives, no matter what abuses or failures they have experienced. There are people who do not understand women like me that need to hear it. There are connections that need to be made.

I will catalog some of my experiences here. I will be brutally honest. I will be open and naked in my thoughts even as they happen. I hope that you will take it for what it’s worth.

Thanks for reading.