The feeling of nothing in your stomach really is different than feeling hungry. Definitely headaches. People call it a hunger headache. Probably two days out of the week, I get a migraine. My brain starts to pulsate. You get them, you can feel them throbbing. It goes from the eyebrow to the back over here. A ball of pain in the front of my head. Like something is holding on to your brain, almost. I will feel so tired, as if I cannot move a limb in my body. It’s like going into a power-save mode. I feel like my stomach’s going to eat me. So it actually feels like it turns to a ball and it just keeps turning. I can’t be relaxed. I can’t be calm. Thanksgiving is on Thursday. What are we eating on Monday? I wanted to make some chicken soup, but I literally could not afford out of my income or out of my SNAP benefits to go out and buy the chicken necessary to do that. You really have to choose: Am I going to pay this bill or am I going to eat? I didn’t eat anything at all today. I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t eat lunch. Skipping breakfast and lunch, and dinner, I’m a little worried about. I still only get the set amount of the SNAP benefits, and it just seems to be going quicker and quicker. I eat a lot of peanut butter because it’s protein and it’s cheap and you can carry it around. If I’m hungry at night, I’ll drink water. I would drink four bottles of Poland Spring water every day. That typically just makes me forget about the fact that I haven’t really eaten much of anything. I’ll look for anything. Even if I have a pack of gum on me, I’ll sit there and just chew the gum until I know that the flavor has compensated something and made me feel OK. All I eat is snacks or chips. I have three kids, so I’m mostly thinking about them. Since my daughter’s been born, I’ve just missed a lot of meals. There are times when I’m so hungry I can’t focus with my daughter. I can’t be present with her because I’m literally so hungry, that’s all I can think of. It’s one thing not to be able to feed yourself, but when it comes to your kids and stuff —— It’s a man’s duty to make sure his child, his children is well taken care of. If I can’t do that, then —— It feels like you failed. If I’m walking on Eighth Avenue and I’m walking by the shops or the bars or the restaurants, most people will think that I will probably be going into those places, not to the food bank. I do get the exorbitant sum of $23 a month for food stamps. The idea of a grown man sustaining themselves on $23 a month, it’s a joke. If it weren’t for the food bank, I don’t know what I would do. During my time as a teacher, I was still going to food banks. Everybody that comes there really showed me you’re not the only one. You’re not the only one out here struggling to be able to feed your family. I just felt like a failure. I did. Because I did all of these great things. I went to school. I did all the things I’m supposed to do. I’ve never been to jail. I’ve never done anything that’s going to put me in jail. I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I just want to live. When people just say, go out and get a job —— Oh, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Well, that’s difficult if you don’t have any boots. Once you’ve experienced food insecurity, it’s something that stays with you. Just that constant kind of negotiating with yourself and the numbers. If I don’t do these calculations right, then it’s not just a math mistake. It’s, you don’t literally have food. I am terrified whenever it comes to Christmas. We can’t afford it right now. I just took all my credit card for food. I don’t know if there’ll be a Thanksgiving or a Christmas. We won’t have a Thanksgiving. We won’t have a Christmas meal type of thing. And that’s really hard to wrap my head around. I can’t cook a turkey. I can’t make stuffing and mashed potatoes. It does feel that you’re not part of it anymore. That’s an easy way to kill somebody’s hope. You take the only thing they have, which is food, what hope is there? [MUSIC PLAYING]
