The rich - by Zarah Writes

Zeewrites God, I hate rich people.I genuinely hate them.And maybe you’re wondering how I can hate something I pray so hard to become.Everyone wants to be rich, right?So why do I hate the very thing I’m begging God for?Maybe because there is an ugliness that sometimes comes with wealth. A certain kind of evil that grows when you know there are people beneath you. When you know that if you fall, someone poorer will probably be the one expected to cushion the impact.A rich man’s fuck-up can become a poor man’s problem.A poor man’s fuck-up?Who suffers for it?The poor man.When a rich man has a problem, somehow the poor man becomes the solution.When a poor man has a problem, somehow he becomes the problem.And God, I hate that. I hate oppression.I hate watching people with money move through the world like other people’s pain is just background noise.I hate how money can make people forget that everyone has a body that feels humiliation. Everyone has a heart that can break. Everyone has a dignity that can be bruised.Most of all, I hate how the rich sometimes refuse to own up to the damage they cause simply because they know they can afford not to.Earlier this evening, I was soliloquizing.Thinking about the things I fear most.And somehow, poverty sat right at the top of the list.Poverty.God.I am so fucking scared of being poor.I have been oppressed enough.I have known what it feels like to need things and not have them. To look at things you want and quietly calculate whether you can afford them. To know that sometimes, having money doesn’t just mean comfort.Sometimes, money means protection.Sometimes, money means dignity.Sometimes, money means people think twice before treating you like shit.And I can’t afford to become an adult who is constantly one bad day away from falling apart.A few weeks ago, I was walking to class.Daily walk.Not because I’m poor, by the way.I was trying to lose weight.And a Lexus 350 drove past me and splashed dirty water all over me.So many cars had passed that road before it.None of them splashed me.But this one came speeding through the puddle, soaked me, moved forward a little, and then slowed down.For a second, I thought maybe he wanted to apologize.Maybe he had seen what he did.Maybe he felt bad.Then the passenger wound down the window.Looked at me.And they drove away.Just like that.I stood there, wet and embarrassed, watching the car disappear.And do you know what hurt even more?I told someone about it.And they told me I should be happy.Because a good car had splashed water on me.A good car.mAs though the car being expensive somehow made the humiliation luxurious.As though being disrespected by someone wealthy was somehow an honour.Why?Why the fuck should I be happy?What exactly was supposed to make me happy about being treated like I was invisible?And maybe that is what scares me most.Not the lack of money itself.But what poverty means in a world like this.It means people can hurt you and laugh because they know you cannot do anything about it.It means your dignity becomes negotiable.It means sometimes people will look at your suffering and call it your portion.It means someone can humiliate you and another person will still find a way to make you feel grateful for it.I don’t want that life.I don’t want to spend my adulthood begging life to be gentle with me.I don’t want to be poor.I don’t want to be powerless.I don’t want to keep swallowing humiliation because I cannot afford to spit it back.God, I don’t want to be poor.I have cried so much tonight that my head hurts.And the saddest part is that beneath all this anger, beneath all this hatred, beneath every ugly thought I have about rich peoplethere is just a girl who is fucking terrified.Terrified that one day she will have nothing.Terrified that she will need help and nobody will come.Terrified that she will work and work and still somehow remain at the bottom.Terrified that the world will keep teaching her that being poor means she should be grateful for whatever little dignity people decide to leave her.I don’t want to be grateful for scraps.I want to be able to afford my life.I want to be able to protect myself.I want to be able to say no.I want to be able to walk away.I want money so badly, not because I want to look down on anyone.But because I am tired of looking up.

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