# The Year I Lived Without Electricity

2026-06-22 · English
#poverty #shame #survival #adaptation #simplicity

---

It was not a choice, at first. The bill went unpaid for long enough that they cut it off, and I didn't have the money to get it back on. I was twenty-nine and I'd made a long series of decisions that seemed reasonable at the time.

I bought candles. I charged my phone at the library. I ate things that didn't require cooking, and then I learned to cook on a camp stove I found at a thrift store for four dollars.

What surprised me was how quickly I adapted. Within three weeks it felt normal. I went to bed earlier because there was nothing to do in the dark. I read more, by candlelight, which sounds romantic and was just reading. I lost track of what day it was.

The hardest part wasn't the dark or the cold or the inconvenience. It was the shame. Not wanting anyone to know. Parking down the street when people came over so they wouldn't see the dark windows.

The power came back on eleven months later. I stood in my kitchen under the fluorescent light and didn't know what to do with myself. Something had shifted. I didn't know yet whether it was good.