I feel poor in ways other people cannot see

Dear Delyara, I don’t mean starving. I mean narrowed. The kind of poor that shows up in tiny choices nobody else notices. Putting one item back. Pretending you didn’t really want the better one. Calculating the rest of the week while smiling through a simple purchase. Feeling guilty about buying decent shampoo. Hearing yourself say “maybe next month” in your head before you’ve even finished wanting something. No one in the shop knows what happened. No one at work knows. No one at the school gate knows. That invisibility makes it harder somehow. Because shame grows well in hidden places. And money, for me, still reaches shame far too quickly.