I was on Facebook last night and I saw this woman on the Marketplace trying to sell assorted PlayDoh for $15. She said her daughter wanted to help because they didn’t have any money for groceries. I tried to ignore it at first. Bitter me, having just had my car stolen (from her exact area) and all my shit thrown out (before it was thankfully recovered in one piece!) wanted to just pass her by. But, throughout the night, I kept thinking about her. And her daughter. How sad it is that kids sometimes understand just how terrible it is to go hungry and wanting to help. It reminded me of a news article I had posted a couple years ago on r/morbidreality about a little boy who was found wandering the streets trying to sell his teddy bear because he hadn’t eaten in days. And I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to do something because I had literally just been on the streets living in my car with my now ex boyfriend, trying to figure out how to make $20 stretch for meals and gas when one of my friends was kind enough to bring us food and a couple essential things like toothbrushes and such. So, I reached out to her and said that I wanted her daughter to keep the Play-Doh and that I would give her $40 for groceries. No strings attached. I then asked if her and her hubby smoked pot (bc 420 - blaze it lol) and she said yes, so I was like “Alright, well I’m planning on checking myself back into the psych ward this week, so I don’t need what I have left in my stash which is 2 grams of top shelf indica. You can have that too. Hopefully it’ll help you two relax after cooking a nice meal for your family.”

Due to social distancing, I placed the money and the weed in her mailbox and waited in my car until she came out to collect it (definitely wanted to make sure that she got it and nobody else). When she came out, she came over to my car and told me about how things went downhill for her since Valentine’s Day when some asshole in a Ram 500 totaled her husbands paid off work truck going 75 mph on the freeway and “fell asleep” at the wheel. How they only had 5k in liability and they had to scrape for the rest to make payments on a new truck since he’s a pool man and he needs a truck for work (my moms bf is a pool guy too, so I know the business in and out). How their stimulus checks and unemployment haven’t arrived and they don’t know if they’ll be able to make the next payment on the truck (or their rent), but for now, at least they’ll have food on the table for a few nights..

What I learned today was that, despite all the shit I’ve been through lately, despite the fact that I was in my garage with a rope when the cops came banging on my door on Saturday or being hospitalized or relapsing on drugs, that I never lost sight of the motto that has always gotten me through the toughest of times which is - be the beauty you want to see in the world.

Thanks for listening. 💕