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[quote=Anonymous]I did not see a doctor or dentist between 14 and 17, except for two ER visits. My first month of college, my RA sent me to Student Health where I was referred out to 4 specialists to fix stuff that I thought was normal, but was related to poverty and child neglect.

I had malnutrition off and on. This was the cause of one ER visit. The dr thought I had an eating disorder.

My mom only told me as an adult that we qualified for FARMs if she divorced my dad.

There was never enough to eat and much of it was low nutritional quality. We ate a lot of bean soup. If it scorched, we still ate it. To this day, I hate to throw out food. My fiancé also grew up poor and we repurpose almost every single scrap.

We ate at soup kitchens when possible and got boxes from food pantries. In the summer and fall, you got flats of veggies and fruits that were past their prime. I learned how to can from my grandmothers so that we didn't have to gorge on pears for 3 days or let it all rot.

My schools required uniforms. I had one set. I washed things out by hand everyday after school so they wouldn't 't stink or be visibly soiled and then hung them to dry. They never fully dried so I started out each day in damp clothes.

My feet grew a lot between 8 and 14. Twice my parents scraped together enough to buy new shoes only to discover I'd been wearing shoes two sizes too small for months. My feet stopped growing at 14. All of HS, I had the same two pairs of shoes: tennis for PE and outside of school; non-tennis that I wore to regular classes and church.

I usually got non school clothes from the thrift store or from nice people at church. They seldom seemed to have DDs my size so I often wore styles meant for adults not teens. H&M and other reasonably affordable stores didn't exist --at least where we lived. There was a $5.99 clothing store a few years later. Buying a new outfit at Kmart for Christmas or my birthday was a big deal. I remember it happening maybe 5 times. My great-aunts would drive us and then treat us to dinner at Friendly's. When they dropped us off, they always had secretly purchased some additional treat for us. They would force my mom to take $20 for groceries, and remind her that the extended family still owned rental property in a rural area in VA. I used to fantasize about that farm and having chucked that would give fresh eggs every day. We ate cheap donated powdered eggs. My mom wouldn't move because my brother had severe ADHD and learning disabilities. She felt he couldn't get a decent education in a tiny rural VA district.

My coat was lined with an old quilt that my mother took apart. I used to fold it in a special way so no one saw. I had the same coat for MS and HS because my brother grew faster and kept losing his things. The pockets had been mended so many times that eventually my mom replaced them altogether. The bottom of my cheap bookbag was held together with duct tape to keep books from falling out.

No heat/ no power was a regular thing. For a while, we had no running water because a pipe burst and the slumlord refused to fix it. I often did my HW by the streetlight. If it was working. Drug dealers and muggers liked to break it.

I didn't have a bed from age 13 to 18. My bed broke. We put the mattress on the floor. Which was fun with the mice and roaches. Eventually, the cheap foam mattress was so beat down that I started stuffing it with my family's old clothing.

There's more, but these were the consistent everyday challenges.

When I left for college, I had a sleeping bag, but I got to sleep in a real bed. I got to eat 3 meals a day and gained 22 lbs. A rich girl who befriended me gave me her castoff clothes when she realized that I really only had a few garments.

I'm not a perfect mom, but I've kept the lights and heat on. My kids have the proper clothing and food. They go to the doctor and dentist.

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