$20

These are my hungry days.

I did it to myself really, or my mind did it. In the end, there is no blame, just a problem I'll have to solve.

I guess when I'm depressed food becomes something I can rely on. Familiar burgers and friendly fries dropped on my doorstep cost only $20 and now, my dignity. Doordash played Iago in the tragedy of this spring. So I spent. I spent hundreds of dollars on food that filled my stomach and soothed my mind and urged my spiral, spiral down. Now I am at the bottom.

And I am hungry.

Pisarro thought we should all move to the country and live in the dirt. Labor was beautiful and pastoral to him. I am grateful for labor, without it I would be left begging for money that has already been given me. Money I wasted. Pisarro also thought we should abandon our government; he was the anarchist of the impressionists. Without the government and its stingy returns on borrowed cash, I would be left with no gas to fill my car. So maybe Pisarro and the impressionists were not the end all of wisdom.

Blood money. I signed up for it, literally. Freezing cold saline, a synthetic solution patching the problem. I do not believe in Eucharist; I will drink my own blood and I will live to tomorrow. Donative exsanguination is a college girl's favorite expenditure. It means she can buy butter and crackers and a gift for a friend.

And so I am in my hungry days. Peanut butter and jelly and stockpiled granola bars. I daydream of the free candy and soda given out at my work, and nightdream of the money those hours will give me.

I make more money from bleeding.

My mother asked why I had to donate plasma. I was too embarrassed to tell her how bad my situation is. I told her I thought it sounded fun. The fact is, after I pay rent and my car insurance bill on the first of next month, I will have less than $20 left in my credit union account. She sends me money every month for rent, how could I tell her I wasted the precious gift she's given me. The money is meant to ease my mind; preventative measure so things don't get bad.

But I got sad.

When I got sad, I wasted and wasted and ate burgers and fries and bought stained capris and shirts I cropped messily and then found myself, left with $20.

$20, but I'll still have my blood money. If I go twice a week, I can make $100. What is the price of life? Saving a life is not heroic if they pay you, a poet might say. The only reason one might donate is for the cash reward, which is not brave. But I am saving my own life. I am buying butter and crackers and holding on to pennies like Scrooge, but if he was poor.

I thought about buying a cat a little while back. Sad little me was curled up in her butterfly chair, surrounded by laundry and paper bags, $10 coke in her cold little fist, and thought, "What my life is missing is a cat. If I had a cat I would be happier. I would be ok."

I bought a plant instead.

If I had bought a cat, I would still be sad, smellier, and so much poorer. How can I be poorer than $20?

I made a beautiful, colorful budget on Google Sheets. I made sure it would calculate tithing and cash flow and factor in goals. But I forgot about it. And I didn't pay tithing. Maybe I am left like I am now because I didn't give God his due and now I can't because if I do I will be evicted or lose my car and I feel like I am letting God down for having let Him down and I am letting mom down, and me down. Down.

For some reason, I feel happy these days. Maybe it's the blood money, carrots, and crackers, or the rush of fear that air will enter my blood alongside red cells mistaken for endorphins, or maybe I am manic. Or maybe I just feel good that at last, I see consequences. I do not want to be bailed out, I want to suffer. I want to feel this gripping fear that I will have to ask for help I shouldn't need. I want to be embarrassed that I allowed some anxiety to cause this anxiety.

I cannot sit in that butterfly chair anymore. There are pizza stains on the white blanket that holds me. But I have nowhere else to sit as I budget and worry and wonder if a burger would make me feel better and less worried about my budget.

But $20 hovers behind my eyelids when they close and I feel elated. Blood rushes to my brain and injection point and I praise our government's stingy returns and I take the pills to lower cholesterol. Maybe at the end of it all, I will no longer need those pills because my blood will be purified with carrots, crackers, and brand-new white plasma.

I thought I knew what they meant when they said "living paycheck to paycheck" before, but the saying has a new meaning to me now.

I am grateful, I think. I'm learning to say no to myself, and that is good.

This isn't a story, but a collection of thoughts. As I read through it I cringe to myself at the fear and the pain of a prim privileged princess. My whole life I have lived in comfort and ease, anxiety completely internal. Even now as I worry I know I can't fall far because my dad is a doctor and my parents love me and I am grateful enough to ask for help and get it. My pride and my dignity are valueless in the end. A person who did not and does not bear my privilege deserves dignity when faced with trial. They deserve to be helped and honored for their effort because starting at the bottom and making it to the middle is so much more impressive than someone like me who started at the top and has fallen to the top of the middle that is still at the top.

I am not a victim of circumstance, I am a victim of folly, and that is shameful in a way poverty never can be.

Maybe I am a victim of poor health, but I can't really call myself a victim. Should I list my privilege? It will surely compound my guilt for my waste and my worry.

No one will read this, it is too jumbled and lost. But I am writing it and it makes me feel good to try and use little words to explain big feelings, ideas, thoughts. I don't let grammar hold me back too much and I like that. I like that my ideas can be read and read and not understood unless they are read by me today and read again tomorrow. They will mean what they mean and then they will mean something else.

I wish I could paint. If I could paint, I wouldn't need to write. If I could paint maybe I could finally see what is true and real. Understand like Rothko does what emotion really looks like, or understand like Pollock what it looks like to experience pain.

But I can't paint. I am just a student with $20, a body full of blood, and a mind full of questions about what suffering really is and why I can't seem to grasp it. In that way, I think I am an artist. I crave suffering because it is what will prove to me that I am solid and real and worthy of pity and dignity.

A girl with a car, a home, a family, and $20. I cannot say I suffer.