Episode 60 – The Price of Bread and the Cost of Dignity…

‘If you don’t provide receipts for the money supplied for food and household items, we’ll be taking over the shopping next week.’

That was it.

No greeting. No question. No interest in how anyone was managing. Just an instruction. A quiet little power move slipped into my phone like a landmine in my pocket.

On the surface – accountability.
Underneath – control.

What they were really saying was, ‘We’re watching you. We don’t trust you. And if you slip up, even by a penny, we’ll snatch away what little bit of autonomy you have left‘.

Never mind that the money wasn’t enough to begin with.
Never mind that you were juggling feeding mouths, keeping the place ticking over, patching holes with whatever scraps you could scrounge. The point was never the groceries. The point was to make you prove your right to exist in their world, week after week.

And when people ask why I stayed so long or why I didn’t speak up more, it’s hard to explain. Because it wasn’t one big explosion. It was a thousand tiny paper cuts like this. Death by receipts. Constantly being made to account for yourself. Constantly being told, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways ‘You owe us‘.

That’s what financial control looks like in families like mine. Not always grand inheritances or cutthroat legal battles. Sometimes it’s being made to beg for grocery money. Sometimes it’s being told to show receipts for your life.

And the thing is, it works. It grinds you down. It makes you question whether you really deserve to be there, whether you’re asking for too much, whether it’s really so bad. It makes you small.

I wish I could say I stormed out that day. I didn’t. Because survival in those kinds of places doesn’t always look like leaving. Sometimes it looks like playing along, buying the groceries, handing over the receipts, while a quiet little fire starts to build somewhere deep inside you.

A fire that one day says ‘Enough‘. If you’re reading this and it sounds familiar, whether it’s groceries or gas money, or guilt trips dressed up as concern – I see you. I know what it’s like to be made to feel like a burden for needing basic things. And I want you to know this:

You are not difficult for needing. You are not greedy for wanting peace. And you don’t owe anyone receipts for your existence.

Ever.