All of the Labels I Have Worn; Poor, Uneducated White Trash?

POOR

I had kids before college, and never could make it work. I am a two time high school dropout that they finally graduated just to get rid of, and a beauty school drop out as well. One kid, two kid, three kid, and minimum wage doesn't even pay daycare. I've had to do without a lot of material things over the past twenty years or so.

It was my choice.

UNEMPLOYED

In the last 18 years I have worked at three different local restaurants, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Wal-Mart, Salvation Army, landscaping, housekeeping, I ran a flea market booth, cleaned a salon, I was a manger at Quickfindit.com a dotcom gone dotbomb, I was a security guard, worked in a daycare, and have run two different store fronts one for five years and the last for a year.

I have never been fired from a single job. 

UNEDUCATED

Formally I took a year and a half of architectural drafting, six weeks of beauty school, I have a nail technology degree without the license and I am a Colorado trained and certified Domestic violence and Sexual Assault Victim's Advocate. I maintain a web presence at Squidoo, and on five different personal sites dedicated to niches.

Informally I taught myself web design, graphics, marketing, bookkeeping, and of course... writing. I've volunteered a lot too.

LAZY

All I have ever wanted to be was a writer, but everybody pushed me towards the traditional paths. I tried and I tried but I didn't fit inside of the box they had chosen for me. I didn't fit into any one box at all. Different sizes, different shapes, new vantage points, and experiences to absorb. I have never ever stopped learning, stopped experiencing, stopped living.

WORTHLESS

After I got sick the doctors told me that I would never work again. I kept thinking about applying for disability, but in my mind that was giving up. That was giving in to circumstances. It was a box. So instead I applied for a Job Retraining Program. I told them that I wanted to be a writer from day one, but they said they didn't fund writers. They did fund video game designers though, so I took it. I built and sold avatars in Second Life for many years alongside my beloved hubby.

NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH

As Second Life went downhill my writing finally picked up. Squidoo brought me out into the world and I have been doing little else for the past four years. I wake up, I write, I sleep. I try very hard to earn everything I take from this world. I didn't have a choice when it came to going on public assistance, but I never stopped trying to get off of it.

ENTITLED

I'm not on any public assistance anymore, we finally reached a steady income and no longer qualify. My teeth are rotting out of my head, I can't afford prescriptions, my furnace went out, my car barely runs, and every single day something else breaks. It's sink or swim these days, but we are swimming towards something...

WHITE TRASH

Yeah, there are a lot of labels in this world but they don't really mean much underneath. I was sick and tired of all of those labels but there they are. I have done everything I could to prove to others that they weren't true, but they still keep sticking them on me anyhow.

They think they are labeling me for my own good, but those labels are purely for them.

MISERABLE

I'm doing the best I can to rip every single one of those labels wide open right now, but some people still only see what they always wanted to see. A failure.

I suppose only time will tell which of us is right. I'm not too worried though. I have no reason to be ashamed of a single one of those labels.


Besides I am too busy trying to add a new label...

HAPPY LIFE

Career Mode, Mommy Mode, Career Mode, Mommy Mode...

I had a plan. It was all figured out down to the letter. After eighteen years of waiting, it was finally set to be unleashed. My oldest, a legal adult. The other two with their father during the school year, finally, after year, and years of waiting it was time to devote my full attention to a career.

It was the deal I made with my kids years ago. If you give me time now and then to write, we will enjoy the fruits of our labor together as a family. I will devote my time to you instead of building a career, and we all knew it meant that we would have to do without a lot.

My family had to make just as many sacrifices as I did to build my writing career and I have never forgotten that.

But of course... plans change.

Especially when you are counting on other people to complete their end of the deal so you can focus on what you need to accomplish. When they decide to change the rules of the game, it throws your whole plan into crisis. 

But they don't know that.

Or do they.

Accidentally on purpose?

I wanted to do this without outside help, and I did the best that I could. I still needed a lot of people to get me here, and I am thankful for every single one. I have never felt entitled to a damn thing from anybody to get me there.

The kids coming home meant that I had to step back out of career mode a bit and back into mommy mode once again. But just a bit... I am still trying to find a balance between career on the front burner and family first, but I am determined to do so.

I have always organized my work around my kids, that was the deal. My children come before me. I'm the mom, it's in my job description. We have all worked hard to get here. It may have taken me a bit longer to get it done than I would have liked, but I never ,ever stopped working towards it.

And if it means being labeled as white trash just a little bit longer, I can hang.

That was the plan all along. To ignore you and keep going.

I can taste it now, everything I have worked for and this time nobody will take it away from me. Everything that I did, I did for my family, and nobody can take that away from me either. Other people can live in their fantasy world all they want, but they can't force me to live there with them.

Lazy, white trash, welfare mom...

Whatever. 

My kids know every single sacrifice that I have made to get here. They know that their mother is more than labels and childish insults, they know have always know that I was more than my critics judged me to be. My kids have believed in me every step of the way.

And I believe fully in them too. 

I will get where I need to be so I can get them where they needed to be. I did everything I have done for my children. I will keep doing everything I do for them. That is my job as a parent.  I refuse to let them down.

We don't need your permission to succeed and we do not need your recognition. All we really need right now is your silence. Whisper what you will, label as you may, saying it over and over again doesn't make it true. Your opinion stopped mattering to us when our best interests stopped mattering to you.

We are going to do this without you.

What you feed grows, what you starve dies...

One of my nick-names as a child was “brat-brat,” it wasn’t said in anger, or in an attempt to insult, but it is something I swore I would never do to my children.

We have a lot of labels for our children. The smart one, the funny one, the troublemaker. It is really amazing how often they live up to those labels. The liar, the thief, the lazy one. Like they are somehow being reinforced by some unknown force. The slut, the junkie, the failure. Those labels have a way of following them throughout their lifetimes.

I would like to think that no parent would willingly label their child a slut, but believe it or not I’ve seen it happen more than once. When I was a teenager a mother I was acquainted with saw her two girls walking towards her, not yet teens, not even tweens, she looked up and greeted them. “There are my little sluts.” My jaw dropped but I didn’t know what to say.

And then there was the little boy who told me that his father had informed him that he already knew his son would grow up to be a junkie. The boy wasn’t even a teenager yet, and he doesn’t do drugs yet either. What the hell was running through this fathers mind when he said this to his own child is beyond me.

I told him that he was better than that. His dad was not the one that would make that decision. His dad was not the one who led his life. His dad had no right to say that to him. I still wonder though, whose words were stronger the words of a friend or the words of a father? Which will he remember the first time someone offers him drugs?

Our children trust us beyond a doubt. Each of those children I have mentioned also love and respect their parents very much. They want to please them, even if it means living up to those labels that have been placed upon them. Every child longs to live up to their parents expectations.

Saying something one time probably isn’t going to program their open little brains, but if we say it enough we burn an image into their brain. This is who you are. This is who you have always been. This is who you will always be.

Instead of reinforcing those negative images in their wide open little brains, I want to input positive images. When I call my youngest my little fiddle player, and my son my tech geek I am consciously turning them towards their more positive traits. When I compliment my oldest on her rationality and her strong sense of responsibility I am telling her I want to see more of THAT.

Some have assumed that my complimenting my children instead of criticizing was due to parental blindness. That I think my children are perfect. They aren’t. I am aware of those qualities that most parents see as negatives. I just don’t see the point in pushing them towards the negative when the positive traits are the ones I want to see grow.

What you feed grows, what you starve dies...

Or maybe that’s just me...