The decision-making abilities of a four-year-old are questionable. When my grandparents came home one night with two bumbling puppies, I crowned the yellowish one Taxi with the brash arrogance only a preschooler can muster. He departed as quickly as he arrived a month later from an infection, when the veterinarian, a close friend of my grandfather, slipped a syringe of antibiotics into Taxi’s neck. He lay gasping and whimpering and died on the way home.

For days, I screamed and sobbed and cursed the vet and his useless medicine that was supposed to cure my puppy and allow him go back to rolling in overgrown fields with his sister. It was only in my teens that I learned that the injection was not to cure him but to end his suffering. And prevent ours. How could we afford costly treatments for a damn dog when we sometimes couldn’t eke out the rent in time?

What I faced was a low-income situation. But at the time, I couldn’t distinguish it. It was the way I lived. I didn’t have anything to compare it to when everyone around me was living the same way. We went to school and work every sunrise knowing we would remain trapped in shitty housing projects and broken cars, functioning robotically in a sort of dystopian society where we were governed by our own helplessness.

The manicured lawns and house cleaning services of Irvine only magnify what I know and lived: Being poor is miserable. It’s thick with the suffocating smog of despair and fading dreams.

So why have we romanticized poverty?

We’ve created standards for acceptance when it comes to poor people, namely that you can’t be poor anymore. It’s OK to be poor, as long as you come out successful — read: rich — when we meet you, a perfectly scripted tale of inspiration rolling off your lips as you TEDtalk to other rich people who paid thousands for a glimpse into your laminated past.

It’s OK only if you rose out of poverty like some cashed-up Phoenix from the ashes to take the check on a night out. No more excuses to cover up the fact that you can’t afford a dinner out with friends. Now, you can treat them while flaunting your aged wisdom from your stint on the “other side!” Oh, how sweet is the taste of hard-earned wealth.

In writing the rubric for the rags-to-riches icons, we’ve also redefined poverty. It’s starving kids in Africa who would love to have those brussel sprouts you’ve been pushing around. It’s a melodramatic b-roll of frail bodies clustered around crumbling shacks that warrant a like, or, if you’re feeling particularly heroic, a share on your Facebook timeline with a few words on the need for change. Poverty is a high school club meeting, resume hours at a soup kitchen and spellbinding tales on the newest entrepreneur’s ascent to the billionaire boys club.

That depiction of poverty isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s far and foreign. Ambiguity enables capitalization on misdirected efforts and the normalization of inadequacy.

For me, being poor has been a few days of darkness when the paycheck arrives after the electricity bill is due. It was dog fights next door and gunshots at night; an empty stomach in the mornings and an empty gas tank on the way to work; angry hands gripping overdue bills and sharp words and tears and slammed doors.

As cruel as it seems to trick a child into thinking their puppy is going to get better, Taxi being discretely euthanized is just a weak taste of the bitter reality of poverty that’s a bit too close for comfort.

We continuously push poverty further and further away, surrounding ourselves with people with similar privileges as us, with a few of the previously poor to keep things “real.” Vaguely labeled as economic disparity in fiery political speeches or compartmentalized into cold statistics, the concept of being poor is perpetuated as a faint haze that only burdens distant faces of color and other traditionally marginalized groups. The lenses of distanciation keep us sane from our guilty discomfort with the proximity of poverty and self-absorbed ignorance. As long as we ourselves aren’t suffering, we can soothe the shame of our apathy with removed and commercialized charity work, while ignoring the plight of those right next to us.

When we all remove our distorted lenses and squint into the glaring force of reality, we can finally see each other. Really see. And maybe that’s the first step to creating something better.

Sarah Heo writes the Friday column on the semblance of security. Contact her at [email protected].