If hopelessness had a taste, it would taste like the cost-of-living crisis does to the poor. And to them it tastes like fear. I know this because I am not slumming it or remembering my struggles through poverty from long ago. I am poor, in the present dismal tense of the word, and I do not see that changing in my near future. Poverty will be my constant companion for the allotted time I have left. It’s not that I am not bright or industrious. It is just that I have illnesses and am close to sixty, so outside of writing I have few employment opportunities.
I just feel so afraid for us all 😔