[madaxe_again]

It’s also a trauma that gets handed down. My parents, when they had me, were by absolutely no means poor - in fact, they were relatively wealthy - but my mother, and her parents before her, grew up in absolutely grinding poverty, and she has been fundamentally shaped by her experiences to the extent that I inherited much of her mindset. My father came from a family that had been wealthy in the colonies, and suddenly found themselves penniless in Portsmouth. The shame, the fear, the what will people think, the make do and mend, the “oh that’s not for me, that’s for real people” attitude. They’d send me to boarding school with no pocket money, which was utterly quixotic to me as a kid - they could afford thousands a term on my schooling, but not £10 a term for me to not be a social outcast? I had to beg, borrow, or steal to pay for field trips, books, and uniform. It screwed them both up. It screwed me up, as while they’d gotten free of the financial poverty trap, they were still there in their minds. I worked out of school like I had the fires of hell on my heels, and kept grinding until, bar the apocalypse, I do not need to worry about money. I still make do and mend. I still feel like an imposter practically everywhere. I still see brown letters and feel the sweat prick down my spine.

It took me a long time to understand where it came from in myself - until I spent time with folks who themselves grew up in actual poverty, and had similar experiences to mine.