Food Pantry- Shame vs. Survival

I was pushed, pushed into pushing this shopping cart at the local community food pantry. And as I pushed the cart selecting which cereal to take and reading labels such as limit 1, I wondered how the last 6 months since I learned about the food pantry which was a resource I never wanted to need became my only source of food.

It was this or starve, it was this or his control. It was in this moment when I faced the other people here beside me taking food and wondered if they felt the same overwhelming shame. I questioned if they came here because of the same need for survival or just as a supplement to lighten their burden. 

I guess it didn’t matter why, no one ever asks why. The fact was, I was here placing bent boxes of pasta in my cart and as I did that I felt like I had somehow failed my family. Should I have just kept my mouth shut? Should I have just continued to “trust” him? 

I placed the canned pears in my cart and wondered if this was the punishment I deserved for answering back. I wasn’t sure what exactly triggered my marriage going south but having six kids out of school for 10 months and no working washing machine for weeks or heat for years and a husband who locks himself and sleeps in an office I’m never allowed into was too much to bear on my own. I couldn’t just sit by watching us deteriorate any further.

I needed to do something. I didn’t come from this, I didn’t know this lifestyle. I wasn’t happy with what my kids were seeing. I grew up comfortable, I had everything I needed and more. I was raised by a single mom who was Dynamite. She instilled in me morals, and values and standards. I watched her hustle her way up and I have it in me too.

I hid this food in the trunk of my van because I was scared of his reaction, I feared he would take it from me and further retaliate. I fed the kids in secrecy, not that he ever asked when and if they ate and eventually I brought them along to ease their fears of not having food. And as much as I hated being in this situation, and I didn’t know it at the time, I was slowly breaking the chains of my dependency on him.

I couldn’t look at this man anymore. We never meant anything to him. A man who plays “savior” and raises money for others on Facebook, desperate for food, while his own family is eating from a food pantry. A man who walks around looking so important with a radio taking calls for his volunteer ambulance service always running to help save others but brings me, his wife leftovers like a dog from his parents’ fridge while pregnant with his second child. The spark that was growing within wanted to play savior to my children from this fraud, no matter the price even if it meant not really eating for a while.

We moved on from that dark time, I left him and everything behind and filed for divorce. I was granted temporary custody on another neglect charge. (Read more: My Ticket Out – The Rose Miller Story) We moved to my mom’s house thin, pale, and malnourished. We brought before the judge the request for support and he lied saying that he went to the food pantry.

Hey, you don’t get to just stand up in court and lie, lie about the things that had such an emotional impact on me and the children. You don’t get to say that you went to the pantry to cover yourself from your neglect and abuse. It’s my signature on file each time I’ve gone shows otherwise. I thank God for the community I am now a part of, and their resources because if we had to continue to rely solely on you we wouldn’t stand a chance.

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