But my two children while both being special needs people are no longer children. They are special needs adults now. And I'm very blessed that they don't require a lot of special attention. As long as they have internet access, a couple of good video games and all the basics like food, clean water and shelter, they are pretty easy to keep happy most of the time. There's no constant running to doctors and specialists like when they were children.
So I find I am now able to do something for myself once in a while. But when you're poor it can be hard to be good to yourself. Thankfully, I'm not too much of a girlie-girl, but even I need a little pampering once in a while. It doesn't cure my depression, nor fix the dilapidated rental we're stuck in, but it does boost my self-esteem for a bit so I'm not drowning in feeling like a worthless failure.
Some women are blessed enough to be able to have a monthly appointment with their favorite stylist, but I'm not someone who's lucky in that manner. And I've been told that if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all. But I do have good luck. It just gets used for things like surviving a severe skull fracture or the tornado missing my house. It may not ever produce a winning lottery ticket for me, but it has kept me alive when I probably should have died.
I know many people of privilege are mean enough to think that poor people don't deserve to ever eat a good meal, have a decent set of clothes, receive proper medical care, have a reliable vehicle to get to work with, nor ever get to step into a beauty parlor and pamper yourself a little. After all, you're poor. That means you're not a full fledged human being with thoughts, feelings, goals and ambitions.
The assumption is you are poor because you are lazy. If you ask my daughter about me, she'll tell you I'm a workaholic. People of privilege who grew up in well to do families and have been lucky enough to have never experienced any type of poverty don't give a thought to what other circumstance may have made you poor and/or are keeping you poor. They don't have a clue how much work your special needs child(ren) are and can't imagine what kind opportunities you've missed out on because you need a work schedule that allows you to be available for doctors' appointments and appointments with specialists.
It's hard to be good to yourself when you're poor. Finding time to do something for yourself can be a challenge when you're dividing yourself between your three jobs and caring for children or elderly or ill relatives. My time has opened up quite a bit since my special needs children became adults, but I still have constraints that can make holding down a job with a variable schedule impossible.
Yet money is always extra tight. Still I managed to squeeze out three different trips to my favorite salon this year. The most recent one being today. And I know it will be my last one for the year and I won't get to pamper myself again until next year when I get my income tax return. Sometimes the visit after receiving my income tax return is the only one I get for the whole year. And there have been years where I couldn't afford a hair appointment at all.
As for the privileged people that think that just because I'm poor I should have to suffer continually and never have anything nice nor ever do anything nice for myself, kiss my ass. God made mankind so that mankind may know joy, and there's no stipulation that only those with money are allowed to know joy. Even the poor may know joy.
