...is stressing me out.

It's been stressing me out for the last 20 years of my life.

I have a stomachache thanks to being poor.

FUCK POVERTY.

...I just realized that a lot of my fundamental psychological ills come from being poor.

[EDIT]

Just as a clarifying note, my family is not poor. My parents might have come to this country with pretty much...nothing, but we are quite safely middle-class now. But growing up we did have very little, and ever since I could remember, arguments and shouting matches between my parents were ALWAYS about money.

To be honest, until recently (like, maybe a year ago) I really had no concept of money. I grew up pretty sheltered and just didn't understand. When I was really young I thought we had an infinite amount of money because my parents would always talk about money in the 4-or-5 digits (they must have been talking about loans or mortgages) and I could only count to about 30 so obviously anything with more than three digits is equal to infinity. Once I told my mom to stop fretting about money, because if we needed more we could obviously always just get more from the bank, which has an infinite amount of money.

As a kid, watching the nightly financial report made me ?_? In middle school history classes, I couldn't really QUITE understand the implications of the introduction of money to societies as a replacement to the bartering system (even though I thought about it pretty hard, which I'm pretty sure most kids didn't). I thought about it but it broke my brain. Even in high school economics, I still couldn't wrap my mind around it. And even though I honestly still don't really get it... about a year ago, I was walking in Wal-mart, trying to get some cheap art supply stuff, when it suddenly occurred to me, and I said out loud: "Money can be used to exchange for goods and services!"

So like, yeah I kind of get it now. I kind of understand what money is.

But that's not to say that I was ignorant of the idea of being a financial burden on my family. In fact that was always an acute feeling I had growing up. Maybe because my coming into existence wasn't quite at the right time, it had a lingering effect on how I saw myself. I always felt an immense, immense guilt knowing that my parents had to spend any money on me (after I figured out we didn't have infinite money, after all). When I was in first grade, I took an after school French class (although now I realize that it was also partially convenient for my parents because both of them had to work full time so they couldn't have taken care of me after school anyway), and after I read the brochure for it (which listed the price of the program), I would cry when I woke up in the mornings. Out of the sheer guilt. So I tried hard never to ask for anything. Any classes that my mom tried to sign me up for, I went to apathetically and easily quit, knowing that by quitting, it was one less expense that I caused. My dad was never in any sense a nurturing parent, so any less money spent on me was a triumph to him, and he pretty much vocalized as much.

I tried really hard all my life to never ask for anything I didn't need, and I never even asked for some things I probably did need. This wasn't too hard for me as I wasn't really interested in obtaining any of the typical stuff that kids tend to like... except for art supplies, which I constantly fantasized about. But my elementary school was pretty well-stocked so I got along pretty well anyway.

And yet somehow, I still ended up being the most expensive kid... and I would cost my family such ridiculous amounts of money. For whatever reason, I attended a private middle school... and now, I attend a private college. Tuition is expensive - it's a huge expense on my family but the worst part is, I'm not even doing well. I don't know if it's because of the guilt that's freezing me up or if I'm just retarded or whatever, but that just make it suck more.

So I guess, by poor, I mean myself personally. I am a poor excuse for a human being. I have no skills, no abilities, no intellect, and worst of all, no discipline and no accomplishment. I have no job and I am a terrible student. I have immense potential, in large part because of what I was born with or nurtured to have or handed on a silver platter, and yet the future looks bleak.

And, that, I think, is what stresses me out.