Being Broke Isn't Just Depressing: It's Traumatic
Someday, if I am feeling very bold and very brave, I’ll go back and read all of the Big Whoop blog posts from this site’s curious existence, beginning with the very first one, which was posted in April of 2017.
It’d be a strange, surreal experience, I reckon, because while I would definitely recognize my writerly voice I suspect I will have forgotten the vast majority of what I’ve written.
So much has happened since this site began, much of it not just bad but tragic. We endured the collective nightmare that was the Trump years, if just barely.
Incidentally, one of the things that terrifies me most about a world that I find overwhelmingly terrifying and confusing, is the horrifying prospect that Donald Trump 2.0 lurks just around the corner and that the worst man in the world will once again become the most powerful man as well.
In a related development, the second worst man in the world, Elon Musk, is probably also the second most powerful man.
Then came COVID. Remember that? Holy fuck was that insane. The whole world turned upside down. As a workaholic introvert who finds human interaction frightening the quarantine period worked for me, at least initially.
2020 was a good year for me professionally. My first self-published book, The Weird Accordion to Al, sold thousands of copies and made a legitimate cultural impact.
That was, alas, the last good year for me professionally. It’s been nothing but struggling since then. I’ve been down so long that it’s starting to feel less like a depression that will end eventually than a new permanent state.
This blog is an ongoing reflection of what I’m thinking and feeling at any given time. Also, because readers demand it, I sometimes talk about sandwiches I have eaten or would like to eat.
But mostly I write about being depressed because that is my reality right now and it has been my reality for a long time. I’m self-conscious about doing so because as a former Midwesterner the last thing I want to do is broadcast my despair to the heavens. I know that reading about someone’s depression can be, well, depressing and that people have an understandable dislike of whining, complaining and self-pity. .
But I do it anyway because it’s cathartic. I’ve got all of this ugliness and pain and self-loathing inside me and I have to let it out. There’s only so much that my Better Help therapist can handle.
I also write about depression so that other people who are experiencing it don’t feel quite so all alone.
Incidentally I joined a Reddit group called Depression Meals. It’s just pictures of the sad little meals that people who are deeply depressed eat accompanied by captions about their misery.
I don’t know why, but it provides me a certain strange comfort to know that other people are struggling and just barely getting by as well.
I’ve written about how depressing and dispiriting and overwhelming being broke can be but I’ve recently realized that being broke is more than depressing: it’s traumatic.
I’ve been carrying that trauma around in my body and mind for decades. I’ve lived with that awful heaviness for as long as I can remember. I honestly think that being a broke adult, particularly a broke parent, has been as devastating to my psyche as growing up in a group home was, if not more so.
It’s traumatic carrying around the deep shame and guilt that comes with knowing that your seemingly insurmountable financial problems are the result of your own poor choices, limitations as a writer and human being and inability to make anywhere near enough money to get by.
It’s traumatic feeling like the last job you had will be the last job that you will ever have.
It’s traumatic when your nervous half joke abut being unemployable turns out to be more of a sober statement of fact.
It’s traumatic not being able to provide the best care to your neurodivergent children because you can’t afford it.
It’s traumatic not being able to get a job.
It’s traumatic feeling like you are forever howling madly into the void and the world either doesn’t hear you or does hear you and simply doesn’t care.
It’s traumatic to feel like you’re constantly letting down your family down because you cannot provide for them financially no matter what you do or how hard you try.
It’s traumatic not being able to visit your depressed, sick father in a nursing home because even Spirit Airlines and Motel 6 are more than you can afford.
It’s traumatic knowing that, for decades, much of your income has gone to evil credit card companies to pay off interest instead of anything real.
It’s traumatic feeling like you’re so far behind that you can’t possibly catch up and that it’s too late for you to turn your life around or ever get out of debt.
It’s a traumatic feeling not being able to give your family a sense of security and stability because your own life, particularly the financial and professional component, is so unstable.
It’s traumatic knowing that you’ve failed the people closest to you, and yourself, in ways you don’t understand but feel deep in your soul.
It’s traumatic feeling like everything that you do is doomed to fail, that you cannot win and the odds are forever stacked against you.
It’s traumatic feeling broken and lost and beyond repair.
It’s traumatic knowing that anytime you seem to be ahead, even a little bit, it’s deceptive and temporary and you will return to your permanent state of desperation inevitably.
Being broke is traumatic. It’s exhausting. It’s draining but it’s more than that. The psychological cost of being broke and in massive debt is massive but it’s not something we generally talk about because we’re ashamed and riddled with guilt. That’s my meager contribution to the discourse: being broke fucking hurts so if you are also struggling the way that I am try to be kind to yourself because capitalism can be not just unkind or cruel but downright sadistic.
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