Anemone's Research Emporium

Go on welfare, get an eating disorder

Anemone Cerridwen
April 6, 2009

When I'm stressed and feeling trapped, which is pretty much all the time these days, I try to find something to sink myself into, to distract myself from the pain of being trapped. Doing something new, something that will take my full attention, is the best thing, especially if it might lead to me not being trapped in poverty someday. When I was a kid at home I went numb, daydreamed, played solitaire, and listened to the radio, until I could leave home. I was a pretty compulsive solitaire player back then. Then I moved out and thawed out - a rather painful process in some ways. One of the things that helped me pull myself together was that I was a student the first few years, and had that sense of hope students often have - tighten the belt for a few years and the payoff is around the corner. Except there was no payoff.

When I went on welfare for the second time (the first time was only for a month and a half between jobs), I started going to cheap movies (remember $2.50 Tuesdays?) and reading library books for something to do. I'd go to the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library and carry home anything that looked reasonably new and interesting. I even read economics, of all things. (Still don't understand it, though.) I was also doing a bit of new age stuff at that time (I'd done quite a bit more in my student years, because one does), and I experimented with a vegetarian diet. And I've always gone through phases where I did a lot of sewing for something to do. At one point I took up knitting. I can usually afford to knit myself one sweater every year or two.

Sometime in the last ten years, I used up my capacity for book reading. I read a whole lot of classics, as well as a whole lot of developmental psychology, for the book I wrote (and haven't sold yet - I'm going to keep mentioning it until I sell it!); then did a big project reading biographies. Over 300 so far. I've read I don't know how many pulp paperbacks, as well as my fair share of popular scholarship for the chattering classes. But there's only so many books you can read before you run out of new and interesting books to read. And even when I do find a new new and interesting book to read, I'm not really able to get into it, since I know from experience that it's not going to get me out of poverty, so why bother?

I've done some other things: I took acting classes, until I got creeped out by a trust exercise that felt unsafe. I was in community choirs for a while. Then my savings ran out. I still take acting classes when I can afford it but it's rare that I can afford to sign up for anything new, and I never seem to be able to keep going when I need to, because the money runs out for another year, momentum dies, I have to go looking for something else to do. I write screenplays when I can hold it together enough to, and get them read at script reading series, but that's an occasional gig. It won't keep me going on a day to day basis. I don't know if it will get me out of poverty either.

I joined a gym for five years and lifted weights, but then the novelty of that wore off. I started working out more and more often as a way of coping, but just got tireder and tireder. Then one day I just couldn't take any more of that annoying television they have (you're supposed to keep the sound off, people!) and quit. I try to keep in shape on my own but it's hard. I miss the routine of the gym, even though I couldn't keep it up.

When I got my new laptop with DVD viewer about four years ago, I started getting movies out of the library, but that's tailing off too, as I've run out of classics to watch. Every once in a while I think of one I haven't seen that I should see, and I put a hold on it, but not very often. I'd really like to see movies when they come out, but that's usually not affordable anymore (cheap movies start at about $7 now).

Two years ago I started hiking. For a while it was great. It was new and exciting, and kept me really happy. And now I've maxed out on that too, because I've pretty much hiked everything interesting that I can get to on the bus. And once I've hiked it, the challenge runs out and I lose interest. I'd love to hike the same trails over and over again happily, but they don't hold my attention after the first hike or two, and so don't help with the stress anymore. I started doing trail work last summer, but that's rapidly losing its ability to help me cope, too. I'm clearing invasive species a bit here and there too, but that's also pretty precarious. For both of them, it's always on someone else's turf, and almost never something I feel like I can just go ahead and do, which is what I need. And it seems like no one cares anyway. What I really need is to be useful some way that I can actually be good at. Today I checked out a mountain bike trail I hadn't hiked before (it was always too dark coming down off Burke Mountain to check it out before), and it was fun hiking along, wondering where I'd come out. But then that was it. Novelty over. And I got on the bus to go home and the old problem came up again.

The old problem: When I'm stressed, and feeling trapped, I head for the junk food. Ken Ragge describes this well in his book The Real AA. Frustration leads to addictive behaviour when there's nothing else you can do. It is very hard to get a lab animal addicted to drugs, but strap it down and let injecting heroin be the only thing it can do, and it will overdose on the stuff soon enough. Being trapped in poverty is like that for me, except that for me it's junk food: caffeine, fat, sugar, chocolate. It makes me sick enough that it dulls the pain. If I had enough money, I'd do so many things. I'd live somewhere I felt safe, I'd eat better, I'd learn horseback riding, learn fencing, take more voice and acting lessons, lift weights at home, get fit. And then I'd be good for something when opportunity knocks. Instead, I'm getting fatter every year. Starch and fibre give me painful cramps and bloating. I'm seriously lactose intolerant and dairy fat is probably a problem, too. I have to eat meat (preferably red) every day if I'm going to be good for anything. But I need the junk food to keep sane on a day to day basis. My belly itches badly from the eczema where my gut is leaking. My skin breaks out constantly. And I keep going up a size. I feel like a blimp, a bloated cramped-up blimp. I try to eat better because I want to be fit and healthy. At one point maybe six years ago or so, I cleared all the foods that give me indigestion out of my diet, and it was great. I felt great. My gut didn't hurt. My skin cleared up. I lost weight (wasn't expecting that one). I slept better. But then my savings ran out and I couldn't keep it up on the money I get from welfare each month. And I rebounded.

It's humiliating. People probably think I'm not trying hard enough, or I'm too stupid to know what to do. Or that if I had enough will power, or chewed enough times (35 chews per mouthful, people!), I could digest inexpensive grains and beans. If only. I don't know how many people realize the simple truth: I don't have enough money to do any better.

These days I try so often to eat healthy, as much because of the indigestion as because of weight or bad skin or pride, but I last maybe a day or two before it's back to the junk. It's expensive (especially when I wobble back and forth). And it's deeply humiliating. I want my health, more than anything. It would give me so much pride to be fit and capable. But I need to make myself sick in order to survive the crippling poverty I'm currently in. I need to feel sick in order to stay sane. My love-hate relationship with junk food, and with food in general, makes me feel like I have an eating disorder. And it's caused by poverty.

No one is so disciplined that they can stay on welfare year after year after year without developing some sort of self-care problems. I think chronic poverty pretty much guarantees some sort of eating disorder or drug problem. And what do you suppose the solution to that is?