I am not rich by any means

I never knew I was poor until i grew up and realized it doesn’t have to mean you live on the street. When I was younger my parents were divorced by the time i reached the age of three, so I experienced two different situations with poverty.  At my fathers all four of us shared one room in my grandmothers house. There was one bed, which my father occupied, while my two sisters and i shared a small air mattress that took up the leftover floor space. I was young and thought my situation was normal, that every child lived this way. My mother moved out of her mothers house shortly after her divorce in to a small house. It was slightly smaller than a double wide trailer and merely sat atop the ground it rested on. No basement. No garage. There was one small bathroom with mold covering the ceiling and wall paper peeling from the walls that was shared by four girls. My sisters and i shared one room with a bunk bed. On the top bunk was my oldest sister and the bottom bed was shared by my middle sister and I until I reached the age of about 11 when my oldest sister moved in with my father at his newly purchased two room apartment after she was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. But then she came back and we had to fit an extra bed in because my middle sister and i had grown accustomed to having our own sleeping space. Now with a bunk bed and a twin bed in a small room there was about a 2 by 2 foot square of total floor space. Eventually we got rid of the bunk bed because my oldest sister was kicked out and the room turned in to two bare mattresses placed on the floor. Things got better financially but there has always been a struggle to make ends meet. For my father the struggles have been to pay child support and his bills while often being layed off from his construction job. For my mother it has been to support three children while cleaning a strangers home every day. For both it has been to keep us of the street.