Being Poor Again

I should have sold my eggs, I thought as I drunkenly biked home after I was fired.

In an act of kindness, my stunned coworkers bought me dinner and drinks at the bar nearby. I nearly broke down at the table over tacos, but one of my coworkers fiercely shook my shoulders. “No. No. You are not going to cry about it. Keep yourself together.”

I said goodnight to them after a few hours, promised to say a proper goodbye when I packed up my things the next day, hopped on my bike, and tried to find my way home.

Half of my brain, at least, dedicated itself to keeping myself erect on the bike. The other half furiously raked through my expenses and tried to figure out what I could survive on. Try as I might, the thought of having a mystery child of mine out there in the world killed the idea of selling my eggs.

Ok. So. Barring the idea of selling my child, I have a month’s salary as severance, and this Friday I had been paid for two weeks’ worth of work. I had $500 in my savings. Maybe $1700 in credit, and I could open another credit card if I needed to—

NO, something inside me screamed, so strong that I swerved on my bike. You are NOT opening a second credit card. Your father lost all his credit opening cards, and every time you fill an application for a credit card it affects your FICO score and you spent your entire college career building good credit. Don’t you remember that you refused to give people credit card applications when you worked at American Eagle? What’s WRONG with you?

I took a deep breath, pausing at the stoplight. Okay. Scratch that option, unless absolutely necessary.

So. A month and a half of salary, plus savings. I’d paid my rent for October already, this could get me by (barely) until…December. I had a bike, and I could walk; that cuts out subway fees—plus I no longer needed to commute, so there was that.

Health care? I had health care until December. If everything failed, I could go on my mother’s insurance. Bad libertarian, I chided myself, but resigned myself nonetheless if I couldn’t find anything in two months. Bad, desperate libertarian. What would your professors say?

Food. Okay. I’ve been hungry before, and this is the easiest part. I’m no stranger to a meal of Vienna sausages, salt and rice. I can stretch out a chicken over a week for a family of four like nobody’s business. I know fifty different ways to make ramen appealing. (My favorite: take an egg and beat it into the broth with a scoop of miso, which comes really cheap from Asian supermarkets. If there’s no miso in the house, the best alternative is a broth made of ketchup and soy sauce.) Plus, at least I had money for food. At the very worst, I could eat grass, as my mother had taught me. At the time I thought it was a fantastic game, and pretended to be a wild tree elf. I had no idea that my mother learned this growing up during the War.

(At this point I spotted some mushrooms growing near a potted tree. I quickly pocketed them and biked off, thinking I’ll figure out later if they’re poisonous. They were.)

But then what about eating out and having drinks? Well, I could convince my friends to meet at happy hours and hole-in-the-walls. (All I’d have to do is say “It’s authentic” and roll my eyes.) I gritted my teeth. That had to be an expense. Losing contact with my friends would send me spiraling into depression—as well as keep me out of the job market.

My BlackBerry—that’s a given. I needed to be in contact. A haircut and a new bag. My hair had become ratty—it does that after it hits a certain length—and my laptop bag was about to burst its seams beyond repair. Look, just because you’re unemployed doesn’t mean that you can look like crap, the practical side retorted. Suck it up—and I think you can ask your mother for that money.

Gym membership?

My mind blanked. I enrolled in a decent gym the moment I came to the city, waiting for the opportune, no-enrollment-fee period to sign up, and stayed in there every spare moment I could get. A gym membership fit the definition of “unnecessary expenditure” in every sense of the term. What was I paying for? Some free weights and treadmills? I could run, couldn’t I? Do pushups in the park? Climb real rocks?

Outside of sports, exercise was a rich person’s leisure, and something my parents couldn’t afford when I was younger. And I was now cutting out other things I considered “nice,” like the occasional bottle of wine or new clothes. Yet this ridiculous sentimental attachment I had to free weights and yoga classes, of all things, brought me to a screeching halt. It was only $50 dollars a month. But it made me feel rich.

I held my composure when I lost my job, when I’d been plied with cheap tequila, when I said goodbye to my coworkers. But the thought of losing my gym membership cracked me as I unlocked the door to my apartment, shut it behind me, and sunk.

Oh for heaven’s sake, I thought, letting loose an unedited but desperate moment of melodrama, why am I poor again?