[ SECRET POST #2104 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2104 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 129 secrets from Secret Submission Post #301.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat x 3 (NS to begin with)], [ 1 - unreadable ], [ 1 - secret posted as text ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Live without

[(Anonymous)]

So I'm wondering something. How many people on here have actually gone hungry before? Or lived without electricity or running water for an extended period of time? This isn't one of those butthurt "check your privilege" type of comments, I'm genuinely curious.

And this can't be by choice. It has to be because this is just how you live life. (Eg. camping for a few weeks in a tent for vacation doesn't count. Living in a tent b/c you're homeless does.)

Honestly, I ask these questions because I'm trying to figure out my experiences against other peoples'. It's awkward to talk about it in real life, partly because I now live in a place where people are more likely to judge me because I used to not be able to shower everyday due to lack of water, rather than be concerned.

not enough to count as deprived

[tyger66]

We were without electricity for a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina, and generally we spend about a week without water/electricity due to hurricane season, but other than that I've been pretty damn privileged.

I did spend a few nights on a bench when my dad kicked me out once (I got an industrial piercing, which he did NOT approve of).

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Huh, good to know I'm not alone in being fucked over by the seasonal weather gods.

Those type of situations do suck. During the summer and winter, we're regularly without power and water, because we still live off of a well, and it freezes in the winter and goes dry in the summer.

The electricity goes out from the ridiculous snowstorms and thunderstorms, and it takes the fucking electric company forever to fix it. And we don't have a generator. So much fail.

Dude, no offense, but your Dad's an ass. Why would any parent deprive their kid of necessities because of something like that. I dunno, I guess b/c my parents had so little growing up, they would never put me or my sibs in that kind of situation on purpose. (All of the other times they didn't have any control of the situation.)

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

I spent about 9 months without air conditioning in a place that regularly gets 90+ temperatures, but I had a roof over my head the whole time (which generally made the heat worse), so I don't know if that's what you're looking for.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Uh. No. No that doesn't count.

If you spent years living in that place with 90+ temperature with no way of moving out, and no hope in the future of leaving, and no adequate way to keep yourself cool and alive, then yes.

But those are my standards, as someone who has lived since birth in a place like that during the summer months, and no AC.

Re: Live without

[otakugal15]

Man, I feel you on that. My parents haven't been able to afford AC for the last.....7 years? It gets miserable during the summer. I was so happy when I was finally able to move out, but I felt all kinds of bad for leaving my mom and brother in that house. :(

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

I lost 11 pounds last summer owing to lack of money for food. I was working, but not enough hours at the time to feed me. This was 11 pounds that I should not have lost; my clothes didn't fit me anymore, and I felt weaker and got tired more easily than I usually do, and everyone I knew told me I looked terrible and sick. (I started getting more hours that fall and put the weight back on, fortunately. I'm back to my normal weight now.)

On a related note, at the time I was having this problem I posted anon about it on a "get it off your cheat" kind of LJ comm I'm on, and about how I was worried about my health because of it, and since the comm had had a LOT of weight-related wank recently I said that this wasn't a "thin privilege" issue because I was legit GOING HUNGRY, and I got a bunch of people dogpiling me and completely bitching me out for not acknowledging my thin privilege and "admitting" that I had it so great for being thin. When some other posters tried to point out that I was on the verge of starving and couldn't help it, the thin-privilege people started yelling about how that was totally irrelevant because no matter WHY I was thin, it automatically meant that I had it better than fatter people and I needed to be humble about that. I don't even.

Re: Live without

[hornpile]

holy crap, that lj comm sounds crazy. I'm sorry you had to go through all that and then have people on the internet tell you you were privileged for it! yikes.

Re: Live without

[yeahscience]

I was genuinely homeless for a few months this year and had only my purse and laptop for possessions after my apartment burned down. On the other hand, I was lucky enough to have a steady well-paying job and generous friends, so I never had to sleep on the streets. I was in the hospital for a few days, crashed on floors for a couple of weeks, stayed with my dad for a couple weeks while he was visiting my town, and then was able to settle in a cheap hostel until I found a new apartment.

Re: Live without

[tasogare_n_hime]

Hold on let me think.
Without electricity: The longest time was when I was a little kid so I don't remember much of it. I was in the winter for about a week I think. We shifted furniture around in the family room so everyone could sleep there, because we very fortunately had a fireplace.

I've gone an entire winter depending on two small electric heaters(which actually worked pretty damn well, to be honest.) because the place I lived in had both heater/AC units die, which led to no AC but a window unit in my bedroom for two summers, a week of which was spent with no AC at all in 100+ degree weather when my old Window unit died on me.

I went without water for about three days, because something, I'm still not sure what, broke. After my water problem was fixed my toilet was broken until I was finally able to move out of there, which was about two months.

Re: Live without

[making_excuses]

I moved 30something times before I turned 8 because my mom prioritized drugs and alcohol, over rent...

I've always had food and necessities though, but if you want to talk crappy childhoods I could write essays, but I've had it better than a lot of people.

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

During the worst part of the recession, we were hit pretty hard, my dad (the sole age-earner) lost his job, etc. Our electricity was constantly being turned off. The worst was the time it lasted all summer and into the fall. I have depression and social phobia, and at this point I hadn't left the house for well over a year and still refused to, so for months I was shut up in the house with almost nothing to do, alone with my thoughts. I kept fantasizing about the things I would do once I got the internet back. Sad as it is, I think that was what kept me from completely cracking up.

Once it started to get cold, we'd have to build fires in the fireplace and huddle around in blankets, but it was still freezing. When it got dark, we had a couple of gas lanterns to read by, but those made me feel sick after awhile. Our stove/water heater/everything was electric. My dad would heat up big pots of water on the crappy old barbecue to wash with.

I am so beyond glad we're past that, even if we're still struggling with some bills and whatnot.

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

Back in december 1999 I spent some time without electricity and running water (in the countryside) because of a freak storm. I was 10, so I don't remember it that well. I remember that we had a half lamb in the freezer and we were worried it'd go bad and covered the freezer with a blanket to try to keep the cold in. In the end we had to cart it off to a friend who still had electricity.

Some of my family members still keep huge amounts of food because they remember the food shortages of WWII.

Re: Live without

[anonymouslyyours]

Lived without both electricity and water simultaneously, other times just without electricity or just without water.

Never had air conditioning or heating outside of a woodstove, which I don't really think are necessities but people get pretty weird and appalled over it. Maybe because it gets up to 100+ in the summer here?

There have been times that we had to pinch pretty hard to stay somewhat fed but I've never actively went hungry for a period of time excepting "purifying" fasts done for religious reasons or punishment/atonement.

I don't think I've had it that bad situationally speaking. I was never actually kicked out or homeless at any point.

People judge you for not having access to running water? WTAF? What kind of people do you know?

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, no. I've always been lucky in life. My apartment isn't lovely, but it's fine.

Also uhh... You know, you wanted to measure you experiences against everyone else's, so people are giving you what they've experienced, and you're out here doling out judgements about which situations are bad and which are not. That's... that's kinda shitty. They're JUST telling you what their nearest equivalent experience is, not saying they're in the same kind. So uh. I'd suggest you tone it down.

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

Well, when I was really little we lived in the remains of an old aluminum camping trailer in the desert. No electicity, no phone lines, about 80 miles from the nearest gas station, and we had to draw our water from a well. Then after that we lived in an actual house for two years with electricity and water, but it didn't have any heating at all which was bad because it rarely got above 15F in the winter, which lasted five months of the year.

Then we lived in a shed in someone's yard for a while. No electricity or sinks or anything but we had a hose tap and a bbq. It had a dirt floor and we had to check our "bed" for scorpions and spiders every night.

Then we moved to the south and we were living in an old house with electricity and water, but no AC or heat. But that had to change after I had a heat stroke because last year or the year before we had more than 100 days of over-100F weather and I probably would have literally died.

I've also spent about 6 years total living on the streets in various cities. Also I've only been to a doctor twice, never seen a dentist even though I've broken two teeth and I had to pull one of my teeth on my own because it had a cavity. And yeah most of my life I haven't been able to get enough to eat. I've been 5'6" and 85 lbs now for about ten years.

And you really need to cut out the oppression olympics. It's fine to be curious about other people's lives but you're coming off like a total douchebag. You don't know what kind of other issues people are dealing with. No AC, or living in a car, or whatever might not seem like a big deal to you but a lot of people have medical issues or disabilities or other circumstances (like abuse, or drug use, or whatever) that make living like that very dangerous or stressful. I lived in a shack with five other people and I had it better than a lot of people who have nice houses with working utilities.

Re: Live without

[unicornherds]

My family lived in the woods at our camp (lean-to, tents, outhouse, bathed in the lake) because when we first planned to move it turned out our house wasn't ready and we had nowhere else to go. I don't remember the details since I was 7 or so at the time, but I think we were there for a month or two.

I've also had to live without electricity or food because of low income. I had an apt but couldn't afford much besides rent, which thankfully included water. But basically I'd go without food and use the library for any electricity I needed, that type of thing.

And then I lived for 6 months traveling and living out of my tent, but that was a choice. I was essentially homeless, but like I said, it was a choice.

Edit: oh, and then there's all the times in winter that our power would go out due to ice storms or snow storms. We lived off a well so that meant no heat, no water, no nothing. The longest I think that went on was 9 or 10 days one time. Usually it's only 2 or 3 days without. But not sure if that's what you were looking for...

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

Hey OP, for what it's worth, I don't think there's anything wrong with asking people to check their privilege. But if that's what you want to do, be straightforward about it. What I see you doing in this thread is saying either, "Holy shit!" or "Ehh, not deprived" when people tell you about experiences that were hard for them, and that really looks like you passing judgment on them based on your own experiences.

I've been in threads about trauma that went kind of the same way, and it makes me really uncomfortable. So I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but the way your responses have been so far, it doesn't make me inclined to tell you anything about my life.

Re: Live without

[biohazardgirl]

Not last summer, but the summer before, my hometown had a huge flood to the point where all of the city's water supply became contaminated for like two weeks. My family wasn't hit so hard because we chose a really good spot in town for our house, but man did it hit a lot of the town really bad. I can't really remember what we did about it, I think we still showered some but we were really living out of water bottles etc.

Also we've lost electricity for extended periods of time several times due to blizzard conditions.

The people you know are assholes if they judge you for having gone through a time in your life where you didn't have running water.

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

When I was growing up, there was no hot water. My parents said when I was nursing and my mom didn't have enough milk, I'd wake up hungry and cry myself to sleep because the formula had to be made with boiling water and my parents couldn't make it fast enough most of the time. For showering, we either took cold showers (the usual fare) or boiled hot water for baths (rarely).

We also didn't have air conditioning. Air conditioning units had to be imported and unless you were a very wealthy person, you couldn't afford it. With daily highs of 30 degrees C/85 degrees F and above for four months of the year - that felt like 35/95 minimum because of the high humidity btw, it was not fun. I spent many nights awake because it was too hot to sleep.

We didn't have heating units in winter either. Again, because it had to be imported and it was expensive, only the wealthy few had one. Sure it was never below freezing but two months of the year the nightly temperatures were 10 degrees C/50 degrees F or lower. With wind howling at 15-25km/h or 9-15mph and the humidity at 80-90% and our building had no insulation to speak of whatsoever, it was fucking miserable. My mom would lay thick blankets on top of our concrete flooring for insulation - no carpets because, at 80% humidity, it'd be an invitation for mold - and everyone would huddled around a foot long incandescent lightbulb at night for warmth. We all slept together in one bed at night under two or three thick blankets because it was too cold to do so otherwise.

I was sick a lot as a kid. There was no helping it because that was how it was for everyone else too, and we lived in a major city.

My parents on the other hand grew up in rural villages without electricity or running water. Everyone lived in wooden houses with dirt floors built by their parents or their grandparents. Everyone did their washings in the nearby stream or rivers, and had to carry water from the community well for cooking. Everyone farmed in addition to whatever day job they had. Everyone preserved and dried greens for the winter months because there were no refrigerators or freezers. Everyone had chickens but only the butchers had pigs, and nobody ate meat until the end of winter. Everyone had to go out and cut wood for their stoves for cooking and for heat. In winter, everyone went to bed hungry at least once per week. There were no toilets so everyone had to bare their asses to the elements in their outhouses - which was and still is usually a deep pit with two planks and two walls - even in the deep of winter.

Last year, some of my parents' acquaintances and their kids went to visit their parents and grandparents in villages like my parents', except better and more modern. The kids came back complaining about how everything was dirty and there was no internet and the toilets were all squat toilets and how everything was just plain wrong. I think they needed a reality check because the things they take for granted like paved roads and flush toilets are not things most of the world have.

tl;dr - while I don't remember living without electricity or running water or food for extended periods of time, I didn't exactly have an easy childhood. My parents grew up without electricity or running water and had to live through starvation but that was how things were like everyone else back then. People who judge you because the things they take for granted were not available to you are jerks and morons. Also, you should tell them it's useless to shower everyday in some places because of environmental reasons - like how someplace dry and dusty will leave you grimy again within an hour - and take pleasure in their faces of disgust.

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

I went hungry for about a week. I had very little food left and no cash (and no friends), and my sister (who lived far away) wouldn't go to the bank to transfer money to my account. I rationed what I had, and the last day ended up begging one of the cafeteria workers for any leftovers so I could not fail the exam I had that afternoon.

I have also lived without heat in winter for months at a time because of shitty landlords.

Re: Live without

[otakugal15]

When I was in the 7th grade, my parents were so strapped for cash they weren't able to pay the utility bill. So, for a moth, we were out of power. Had to do baths with water heated on the stove, keep perishable foods in a cooler, had no phones to use. My mom, brother, and I spent a lot of time at the library so we could do homework in the light.

It was rough. Never thought we'd ever get the power back, but, my dad got a raise and we were finally able to get it back on.

and the bad thing was, this was during late Feb/early March. So it was still cold around me area, so it was freezing most of that time.

It was probably during this time that I realized how much I hate the cold.

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't realise this was uncommon until recently when comparing lives with a friend of mine (who frequently mentioned how poor her family was growing up and how jealous she was of not being able to afford class trips) only for us both to realise I had been worse off. (I didn't go on those trips either)

When I was 5 to 6 my family was without running water and electricity in a rural location, although we got running water towards the end from an upriver dam and then some electricity. Prior to electricity we had a fireplace and would burn a fire under the bath.

We didn't really go hungry though, food was a priority. It wasn't good food, but it was there. Or maybe we did miss the occaisonal meal and I don't remember, I had to have developed my weird food hoarding somewhere.

Later on in life as a student I frequently had to forgo meals in favour of rent+bills because if I didn't pay those I was out of the course and the state.

I'm mostly good now though and it doesn't really bother me except that I don't mention living situations in the past. I might go "we weren't rich" but I'm not going to elaborate on less rich = no electricity, no water, no heating but an iron fireplace.

People who are going to judge you for having a less privileged life, let alone your PAST life, are dickheads.

Re: Live without

[tabaqui]

We had no gas (which means no hot water/no oven/stove) for a month or so because we didn't have enough money to pay the bill. Fortunately, the water wasn't on the utilities.

My brother's fiance grew up with hippy-dippy parents, lived a lot of her childhood in vans and yurt-type houses, school buses, stuff like that. No running water, no electricity, a mom who had a string of boyfriends that she had a number of kids with and so got a lot of shit from people.

She's hyper-aware of how she looks and dresses, takes forever to get ready, never goes out looking less than perfectly groomed and carries a lint roller at all times. Some people would think her upbringing was awesome and amazing - she hated a lot of it and resented that she was a dirty little hippy girl to other kids at school.

So you basically have to decide - how much do you care about being judged, and if the people who are judging you are worth cultivating. I say - if they judge, they are probably not good friend material, and look elsewhere, but i know it's difficult to just not interact at all.

Re: Live without

[(Anonymous)]

When I was twenty I was homeless for about six months, unable to find work for part of that time due to, you know, not having somewhere to clean myself up, not being able to get clothes that didn't obviously look lived in for a week, etc. I was living wherever I could sleeping not in a tent but in blankets propped up on branches of trees to try and keep the dirt out when it was windy. Pizza places were my saving grace since they always had left over orders from orders people would place and then cancel, and they'd give me those out the back door.

Eventually I found my way to a homeless shelter, and I was able to first sleep on the floor of their chapel with four other women and twenty guys, get changes of clothes and showers for free, and free breakfast and dinner. I then joined a program there and was moved into the facility as one of their live-in clients.

Now I'm rooming with another graduate from the program and I have a job working at the same homeless shelter that saved me. I've officially been employed for over two years and it feels amazing being able to pay my own bills, buy my own clothes and fix my own meals with food I was able to buy for myself.