I grew up dirt poor, like literally on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in a house that's literally falling apart (seriously, my dad almost fell into the basement because of rotted floorboards) and infested with roaches to the point that there was a thick coat of roach poop covering everything. I never knew what it was like to just get things handed to me whenever I wanted them. I also have trauma from that and the fact that my parents were hoarders. We could have fixed that house up nice, if it weren't for the fact that my parents spent so much money on shit that doesn't matter (like hundreds of ceramic figurines). If a pan got to dirty in my house, my mom would go and buy a new one and never throw the old one out, she'd rather buy new dishes than wash the dirty ones. We had literally hundreds of empty plastic butter and used food containers that never got used, we had so much junk that you couldn't see the floor in our house for the most part, it was a nightmare for me as a kid.

FF to being a lefty adult in a hellscape of a capitalist society, I've been disabled my entire life and living off of disability this whole time, and haven't had a job since age 14, I'm 36 now. I just got a job last year that doubled my income, I can actually save up money now instead of spending all of it on just surviving month to month (granted it isn't much). I have multiple friends who are begging for money, who are about to get kicked out and electricity shut off, and I feel bad for them, but we are mutuals on FB and I do pay attention to what they spend the money they do get on, and because of that, I don't want want to really help them.

Like, these friends are running around spending like $200 a month on makeup alone a month, spending money on squishmallows and $500 outfits. Vanity IMO should not come before taking care of yourself. Music is the most important thing to me in my life, I've had to sell off the only musical instrument I had 15 years ago, knowing it would be years before I could afford another. I've sold off clothes, I've sold off pretty much all my possessions over the years, possessions that took me months to save up for. I've been running around with no makeup and only sweatpants and T-shirts for years now with hardly no creative outlet simply because I cannot afford not to. My mental health suffered, sure.....but it sure would suffer more if I were homeless or didn't have food to eat. Am I an asshole for not giving these people money when they won't sell off anything, or forego makeup and expensive outfits and such? I feel like an asshole, but also I don't want to help people who won't help themselves while I've struggled my entire life just to survive.