The Luck of Being Down on Your Luck in America

I have always been drawn to edges, underbellies, silver linings, and contrasts.
I have lived long enough so I can finally see where my high wire dances over perpendicular precipice have led.

I did not feel like I landed until I was 30, and now at 50+, I can see what I have gained by my unexpected life and experiences.

I expected to be a slightly plump, cookie-baking home-maker. I was tossed into the world instead, and have tried on many lives.

I have dined under chandeliers, and sold my plasma to feed my children.

I have been on stage, singing and playing my songs to cheering thousands, and I have been an invisible nothing girl.

I have been a smiling, bobbing waitress, and a recluse.

I have ridden in limosines, and I have ridden a child's bicycle with no seat to work.

I was taught it was more blessed to give than to receive, and found myself on the receiving end, accepting Christmas presents for my children from local churches.

I have had a middle class ego,  astonished to find myself having to apply for food stamps.

I have believed in the power of prayer, and known that many a pious mother before me has had hungry children.

I seek non-violent confrontations, but I would have killed to protect my children.

I am an escapee from domestic violence, a displaced home-maker turned head of household.

I have been on top of the world, and I've been close to dying alone.

I have been painfully shy, and astonishingly bold.

I have been unable to listen. I learned to listen.

I loved the church. I rejected the church and went my own way.

I am reborn, and reborn but not like people say.

One brief fling with another female musician and I'm a lesbian.

Two failed marriages and I'm a double divorcee.

People can't decide if I'm ugly or beautiful, smart or stupid, crazy or sane; I answer to many names.

I have expected justice and been deeply dismayed.

I have believed that doctors and dentists, counselors, psychiatrists, and hospitals cared about me and mine, and I have been invisible, staring in horror at the dollar signs shining in their eyes as they slam the door and lock it.

I have held my cocktail, chatting and bobbing at the snobbiest of snob events with the Virginia Horsey Set, while my best friends back home are a motley crew of characters: scarred-up and perpetually broke, some toothless, some blacker than coal, some gayest of gay, some say some: crazy.

I am compassionate/ruthless, empathic/self-absorbed, an angry dreamer who loves microscopes and telescopes, angles and edges...and maybe just maybe the things I've learned are useful to others.

I've always, always loved to figure out how to replace misery with joy, the changes I would make in society's response to poverty. I know what it feels like to be down on your luck in America.