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Relative poverty had meant not being homeless or that having empty tables of food each night. It was rather that everything you own is second or third handed down. The size of those meals just barely made it feel like it lasted. The house wasn't full of fancy priced stuff and certainly was working building site constantly. You get accustomed to the snake that lives in the front wall of the house, being thankful of it eating the rodents that carried diseases. The season of peak hot weather made it unbearable to be inside or out of the house. Not affordable to have a storm shelter, just having to bare with letting the roof be torn off above you. You can afford things but never anything in the savings. What little savings there is was put to house repair or monthly necessity like the debt to the electoral bill or water bill.

But it wasn't unhappy living. House projects became family affairs. Repairing the roof with your brother. Caught another black widow out the bathroom.

Watching the small bear break into your neighbours backyard while they left a bbq unattended. Such events were better watched in safety from upstairs, laughing as the bear can't climb out the neighbours pool.

School was never pleasant, no one enjoys it. Being treated as number and not a individual. Being assumed the problem because you wear rougher clothing then those actually bullying you. Having reading difficulties, having a slower time to process the same learning experience and being pulled behind grade as you are labelled unteachable. Being left behind in development because the class around you is 2 years younger then you. Such educational problems came home, with the stress of school calling parents. Parents calling them back. The eventual being transfere schools... starting at the bottom and judged all over again.

The cycle of this system seems to not break. Making family life depressing as they began to use those labels that school had. Not having the money for a proper dyslexic assessment or afford a private tutor. Going to a paid specialist school is out of the question.

Being the reason for your family falling apart. It hurts. To small a voice to have own opinion heard for. To little of age to be call wise. Ignorant of the adult problems too. Such as her brother getting older and making such changes.

Reflected back of younger days, ignorance was bliss.

Not seeing the pain that drove away her biological father. Her mother over working to pay the bills, having no energy to clean or cook. Being left alone so much. Playing in a living room to hot and it being to dangerous to be outside. There wasn't much protection from a glass sliding door, that wouldn't stop a bear. The many hidden cracks of spider nests and snakes.