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Perpetual Lack

In her book Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth Sarah Smarsh writes

What I did hunger for sharply, what my life lacked most sorely, was in my mother’s heart—which had been scarred by the traumas of monetary poverty but carried a feeling of perpetual lack and discontent that knows no class.

The poverty I felt most, then, was a scarcity of the heart, a near-constant state of longing for the mother right in front of me yet out of reach. She withheld the immense love she had inside her like children of the Great Depression hoarded coins. Being her child, I had no choice but to be emotionally impoverished with her. I offered to rub her back every day so that I could touch her skin.

That feeling of perpetual lack and discontent Smarsh describes could come from any number of traumas but it leaves the person feeling unreachable to those who seek their affection. It could a mother who is mentally distant because her marriage is empty and loveless - she pines for a conjugal bliss that she can never have. In that, she suffers a perpetual lack and discontent and is not able to be a real mother to her kids.

A father would remain forever frustrated by lack of advancement in his career despite all his efforts. As he spins away a cog in the wheel never quite achieving the status his peers do almost effortlessly.  He too brings home that same relentless discontent. The offspring of such a couple no matter how affluent would feel the same poverty and hunger that Smarsh describes.

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