being broke.

how struggling shapes up your mood/life

I grew up in a house that was always on the teetering edge of being completely broke, if we weren’t completely broke already. As the oldest/first child that my parents had, I was able to see the slow progression of houses and jobs that my siblings did not. They got to grow accustomed to the household which could afford takeaway foods a lot more, snacks in the cupboards and an abundance of house decor. You would think it would prepare me for my eventual dip into the broke life and, in some ways, it did. I’m more resourceful than most. Food struggle didn’t really hit me as hard as you’d expect. I just wasn’t expecting the attitude that comes with it.

There were two things that I thought of as my financial struggles really began to hit. The first was George Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and in London’. To clarify, I am no George Orwell superfan. If you start telling me about the genius that was ‘1984’, I’m going to hit you with the fact that most of that book was taken from ‘We’ by Yevgeny Zamyatin, just put into the more familiarised context of London and its growing surveillance landscape. But I was aware of Down and Out because it’s one of the major introductory unseen prose passages that secondary school kids are taught that I learnt and have taught to other children. The passage usually taken is from Chapter Three:

It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have
thought so much about poverty--it is the thing you have feared all your
life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it, is
all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite
simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be
terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar LOWNESS of
poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the
complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.

You discover, for instance, the secrecy attaching to poverty. At a
sudden stroke you have been reduced to an income of six francs a day. But
of course you dare not admit it--you have got to pretend that you are
living quite as usual. From the start it tangles you in a net of lies, and
even with the lies you can hardly manage it. You stop sending clothes to
the laundry, and the laundress catches you in the street and asks you why;
you mumble something, and she, thinking you are sending the clothes
elsewhere, is your enemy for life. The tobacconist keeps asking why you
have cut down your smoking. There are letters you want to answer, and
cannot, because stamps are too expensive. And then there are your meals--
meals are the worst difficulty of all. Every day at meal-times you go out,
ostensibly to a restaurant, and loaf an hour in the Luxembourg Gardens,
watching the pigeons. Afterwards you smuggle your food home in your
pockets. Your food is bread and margarine, or bread and wine, and even the
nature of the food is governed by lies. You have to buy rye bread instead
of household bread, because the rye loaves, though dearer, are round and
can be smuggled in your pockets. This wastes you a franc a day. Sometimes,
to keep up appearances, you have to spend sixty centimes on a drink, and go
correspondingly short of food. Your linen gets filthy, and you run out of
soap and razor-blades. Your hair wants cutting, and you try to cut it
yourself, with such fearful results that you have to go to the barber after
all, and spend the equivalent of a day's food. All day you are telling
lies, and expensive lies.

adriana zebrauskas, mexico city

When I was learning this, even as I was teaching it to others, I felt that I was reading into an experience that was meant to be relatable but that I had missed out. A joke that had been explained to me in great detail, which I understood, but just didn’t find funny. Then I became broke with little net to fall back on and I understood just what George meant. It was a small moment involving my friends that enlightened me. They were in the line to buy food for themselves and I had joined them. They were surprised that I was in and asked me where I had been. I did not want to admit that I didn’t have the money to travel, so stayed in my room letting the world pass me by. I made the excuse that I just ‘couldn’t be bothered and laughed it off’. Usually, it would be fine if I just stayed in the line with them and went to the side by the time we got to the till so we could sit and talk elsewhere. The pressure to buy something did not used to be on me. But then my friend asked if I was buying something. Instead of a simple no, I felt a sudden influx of hunger and ordered a £1.30 overpriced chocolate muffin with white chocolate chips. I hate white chocolate. As I ate, I thought about now that I was down by £1.30, travel is about £1.75 both ways, I need new toilet paper, the toilet cleaner has ran out and I just used up money on a muffin I didn’t even like. I didn’t even have the heart to finish it. But to keep up with appearances, I smiled as I ordered the muffin I could’ve, should’ve, been able to ignore hunger and live without. I had rice in my bag. A repetitive meal made in order to just get through my scarcity. Why is it, now that I really needed to have self restraint, that I crumbled under the possibility of people being able to witness my struggling?

The web of lies only builds. At first, it was small. I flaked on an outing and blamed it on knowing that a guy I did not want to see would be there. He did end up being there, which I knew he would, but I don’t care about seeing people I don’t like. He was just a handsome excuse. Then I started getting asked out to several outings. Each one more elaborate than the next. It got to a point I had to finally create a large lie that I was taking a cleanse. In a way, it wasn’t a lie, it was just a reframing of the truth. I was taking time away from drinking, from partying, and that was, in some way, a cleanse. But if I had the money, I would’ve gladly and easily wasted it on a night out. Some of my friends must be annoyed with me for it. They’ll be even more annoyed when they see my upcoming posts of me at an outing in my expensive dress that I don’t have the heart to sell in an expensive restaurant, followed by a clubbing experience. I couldn’t say no to that outing. The friendship is too strong for me to say no to celebrate her birthday and yet not strong enough for me to admit that I’m struggling. What an odd position to be in.

The lies have dampened my mood. Every second feels more precious than the last. Every unpaid opportunity that I accept on the grounds of exposure and a need not to be too ‘picky’ so early into my acting career feels less happy as a confirmation of my hard work or improvement, but a reminder that the money fairies just aren’t looking my way yet. I know it will change, that it has to change. But it hasn’t yet, so I’m frustrated. The frustration is so strong that I understand why some other poor people go out and do not beg for money, but beg for a drink/cigarette/drugs. As much as you need the money, it becomes another stress once you’ve gotten just enough to have Monday more comfortable than Friday was, but too little not to be afraid of Wednesday coming. The stress of it all makes me refuse to wake up until I really have to. The sign for when I really have to could be a specific time, an email sent to me that gives me hope, a message from a friend responding to a funny story I made…just something that tells me everything can’t be shit. Drugs or a cigarette looks more medicinal to me now. At least you’ve spent money on a guaranteed good time, even if it’s a moment. I understand why the man begging on the train was mistaken for wanting a cigarette, and I understand even more why the other man was up and willing to give him one, if that’s what he wanted. We can’t trust ourselves to give a pound, but we trust the other broke person enough with a cigarette from a £20 pack.

I’ll be in Morocco within less than three weeks. When I get back, I’ll be broker than ever. I will still find a way to get around. I’m just about managing now. I’ve financed it at the expense of my comfort and unhappy coincidences, cruel jabs from the universe, have made the trip amount to more than it did on paper. I am no longer angry about it, or even sad about it. If I’m going to be broke for a long time, at least I’ll get to say that I was rich in a foreign country and came back a beggar. That’s a fun conversation starter. If anything, I feel relieved. I’ll be surrounded by people who are sharers. I know the common analogy of sharing intimacy is that of a clementine or an orange, seemingly designed to be picked apart and taken by many. It almost feels like it’s telling you it is so good, it must be shared. But I don’t think it suffices in this case for this particular group that is edging towards struggle. Sharing a blunt is best. I used to think of the act of someone lighting the end of a cigarette for me as something almost romantic, the way your eyes seem to lock in together as it lights. But with this, the passing and pulls of the stick is a different kind of intimacy. Every silent pull and pass is a conversation:

I am fucked. And so are you. I am fucked. And so are you. I am fucked. And so are you. But we are fucked together.

morocco, fez, 1994