Thoughts and Prayers
Cash upfront. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Empty promises. Promises in the dark.
I especially like that last one and I'm thinking of it both in terms of sexual relationships and "being in the dark" in terms of not knowing what you are getting yourself into, what you can count on, etc.
I never had much money. I didn't send my in laws much new stuff. It was mostly hand-me-downs and I paid postage and did the work of packaging it all up, something I used to be good at.
I bought a small house in Kansas and then visited my sister and she was newly married. I did a lot for her and got compensated by mailing myself a lot of hand-me-downs from cleaning out her closets.
This was during the Great Flood of 1993 and I was mailing myself packages to a friend's house because I wasn't home to accept them and she was losing her marbles as the waters rose and she wondered how to protect my stuff while her home was threatened.
I got home and left my suitcase packed. The rains continued and I tossed my kids and suitcase in the car every morning and went to an eatery to make sure if it got bad, I could get out. I returned home after the rain stopped and the waters receded.
I did this for like two weeks. Probably during the same period, I was unpacking the boxes I sent to myself and upgrading my household to more solidly middle class and then sending my old stuff to my in laws and upgrading their lives from dirt poor to lower middle class.
It involved a lot of work and a little money for postage and it changed my life and the lives of my in laws and nephews and nieces. After that, they were less needy.
Pre-internet, I had a lot of long distance relationships that were important to my life. I sent and received so many packages and letters, I knew what day it would arrive based on when I mailed it or someone called me and told me it was in the mail.
Perhaps because of those experiences, I never felt like an online only relationship wasn't a real relationship and couldn't be materially beneficial in the here and now.
I'm medically handicapped and was a military wife. I homeschooled my kids. I had real friends online and they helped me raise and educate my "impossible" kids and helped me get healthier when that's not supposed to be possible.
The internet is a means to have a meaningful relationship to people elsewhere and I don't really understand why people act like online relationships aren't real relationships. And I never understood why people on Metafilter and Hacker News acted like they couldn't meaningfully help me when I was homeless.
If someone is very poor, five dollars today matters. A million down the road is probably an empty promise that won't be kept and they could die of poverty waiting for it.
I don't know why that's so hard to understand.
I had people say to me "I would give you half if I won the lottery." That's probably not true. They would not give me one thin dime today. They probably won't give me tons of money if they suddenly have a huge windfall.
It's just a way to pretend to care and act like "Your problems are so big, it would take something like winning the lottery to fix them. It'stoo much for me to meaningfully help here and now." And I'm like "OR you could HIRE me TODAY to review a one-page resume. AND then tell friends I do that kind of work."
I didn't need a LOT of money ....someday. I needed a little money TODAY and regularly month in and month out.
Someone on Twitter once said something like "Thoughts and prayers: The air guitar of caring."
I absolutely loathe it when people imagine saying "Thanks" or something like that is sufficient. I'm fairly confident people view what I do as "making them feel good" emotionally and so if they pat me on the head, they've paid me back in kind when the reality is I've probably improved their life in an important material fashion even if we "only talked" and they are basically stealing to act like they don't owe me more than pretty words.
My words are more than pretty. They are useful.
And I'm clear this awful thing so many people did to me was just the shitty way they operated habitually and it went a long ways towards explaining why planet Earth sucks.
Footnote
I don't know how to quote any of this in a way that readily fits here, but these are sort of related posts:
2. Women's rights has an extremely long way to go on some very basic details