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Times are tough. Some people are a hospital bill away from homelessness, and others are hanging on minimum wage to put food on the table. Brooklyn (@brooklynmeeshee<\/a>) watched an influencer restock her fridge and do a grocery haul, then her tears flowed.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m 36 years old, and I have never been able to go into the supermarket and just buy everything I wanted and needed and not worry about the price,\u201d Brooklyn told TikTok. She was scrolling through the app late in the night when another influencer\u2019s video came on her For You page.<\/p>\n The influencer would usually post about makeup and luxury hauls. But this particular TikTok was about her restocking her empty fridge, so Brooklyn stayed to watch. The influencer went to the supermarket, filled her cart with her groceries, checked out, and then restocked her fridge. It was a mundane video\u2014the kind of content that people who loved organizing would want to watch.<\/p>\n But for Brooklyn, the video was aspirational.<\/p>\n \u201cIt got me thinking about a time when I was younger when our fridge was empty for a month,\u201d Brooklyn said.<\/p>\n Growing up on food stamps and an empty fridge <\/p>\n Brooklyn said that she had grown up poor. Her mother did not know how to speak English. Brooklyn claimed that her mother, who did not know how to read or write, used to work a minimum wage job to keep the family of five afloat.<\/p>\n \u201cPutting food on the table was heavily reliant on public assistance.\u201d Her family needed food stamps<\/a>, which required paperwork to fill out. Since her mother was unable to read or write, Brooklyn was responsible for filling out the renewal forms for the food stamps on a monthly basis.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember this one particular month\u2014I guess I hadn\u2019t filled out the paperwork properly, and there was something that was missing,\u201d Brooklyn said. Because of the error, her family did not get the food stamps for that month. Instead of going to the grocery, the family had to visit churches and food pantries to survive.<\/p>\n \u201cOut of all the years that I\u2019ve been on this Earth\u2026 I\u2019ve never been able to go to a supermarket and fill up my fridge and not have to worry about the price,\u201d Brooklyn said. It is a privilege to grab something without having to check the price or scan shelves for bargain alternatives. It\u2019s a mark of financial stability to be able to purchase one of Walmart\u2019s trending cakes out of curiosity<\/a> instead of ruminating about the other bills that need to be paid that month. This is simply a world Brooklyn did not grow up in.<\/p>\n Food shouldn\u2019t be a luxury <\/p>\n \u201cAs I was watching the video, I saw her put just simple things\u2026 like tomatoes, and lettuce, and meat.\u201d Brooklyn emphasized the lack of pausing and thinking for every item the influencer grabbed at the grocery. In comparison to her situation, she had spent so much of her life making ends meet.<\/p>\n At this point, Brooklyn was tearing up. Being able to check out of a grocery store with a full cart should be a norm. But for people like Brooklyn, they would need to rethink all the items in their cart and leave some behind before checking out because there\u2019s never enough to pay with.<\/p>\n \u201cI know it\u2019s going to sound so simple for some, but I don\u2019t want to leave this Earth without knowing that feeling,\u201d Brooklyn said. It\u2019s her dream to know what it\u2019s like to shop for her basic necessities without having to scrimp on every penny or check her bank account. Brooklyn said that as \u201cambitious\u201d as it may seem, she also wants to buy her mother groceries and fill her fridge, too.<\/p>\n These may seem like simple dreams, but times are tough, and even having one meal a day seems like a luxury<\/a> that some couldn\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n (Featured images: brooklynmeeshee<\/a> on TikTok)<\/p>\n Have a tip we should know? [email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n