What It's Like to Be Food Insecure During the COVID-19 Pandemic

My name is Jase. I live in Thunder Bay, Canada and I am food insecure. I have been using food banks for the better part of 14 years. I haven’t had enough sustainable income to ensure I have enough food on my table. I know what you are thinking — how is that possible in a country like Canada, which has such an abundance of food and for the most part has socialist systems designed assist its people?

I won’t get into the politics in this story, but you can bet the issues center on the systemic barriers that exist solely to keep individuals and families in a lower socioeconomic bracket. (For a left-leaning country I find it shocking that we almost have a caste system in our social strata. You don’t inherit your father’s craft, but poverty and trauma are intergenerational and for the most part correlate and impede upward mobility.)

I live with a few mental illness, and thankfully my depression seems to be relenting. The warmer weather is having an impact on my seasonal affective disorder, but still in the vein of transparency, the underlying depression is having its way with me. Regardless I am trying to work around those mental barriers and find little ways to keep the illness I possess at bay.

Right, issue number one. I mention a “few” mental illnesses I live with — there are seven of them to be exact, and all under one roof (one mind). And like most roommates, they aren’t the most respectful. That smattering of mental illness makes acquiring and keeping gainful employment extremely difficult. Which compounds my issues and doesn’t assist my poverty and food insecure lifestyle.

Because I have multiple mental illness, my life will for the most part always be difficult. But it doesn’t have to always be the same. I have food trauma (seriously, that is a real thing!) but food trauma is co-morbid (a word I learned to embrace in the endless hours of counseling I have received) with my mental health. I am affected by food, through life experience. So I really try to work with the foods I get from food banks, even if there is a very limited selection.

With COVID-19 in full swing, access to food has become a lot less, and I have to traverse through hordes of people like me who have very little care about the virus, social distancing and self-isolation. I navigate poverty, food banks and manage to live my best life. It has taken me over 20 years to find things that work for me. A lot of personal work under the psycho-social umbrella to get me to finally start writing about it. With this virus it really plays with my mental health, activates my paranoia and hypervigilance. Everyone was hoarding toilet paper, so I hoarded toilet paper. I don’t have enough food in my fridge, but I have toilet paper for three months. Maybe toilet paper goes on the menu when the canned goods run out.

Food banks last approximately four days, so every four days people like myself go back out, ride the bus for an hour or more, wait in line with 100 or more other people, all touching, coughing and wheezing on things. Collect our food, bus home and bring everything I came into contact with to my apartment building, which has kids and families.

Agencies that are made to assist me are shut down, but liquor stores are still open. Only one of those is truly an essential service. I don’t drink but maybe should, beer has bread in it, right?

This isn’t a poor me story. I am just trying to bring awareness and advocate on behalf of my kind. Because I am poor and food insecure, I have to continually expose myself just to survive. This is problematic, and I am sure the same can be said all over North America. Poor people often don’t eat well, have weakened immune systems and are called a vulnerable population for a reason.

I hope things start changing, because when someone is already in crisis, and another crisis is presented, the damage done to that person is rather large and generally to the person in crisis rather catastrophic.

I hope everyone is staying safe, and practicing distancing the best they can. Hugs from Thunder Bay.

Concerned about coronavirus? Stay informed with these articles:

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• 8 Soaps You Can Use to Help Prevent the Spread of Illness
• How Can You Tell the Difference Between Anxiety and COVID-19 Symptoms?
• New Study Suggests Digestive Issues Can Be First Sign of COVID-19

Follow this journey on Into the Northness.