One way to imagine being poor: imagine lots of slow leaks. Your bank account leaks, your car's engine leaks, your mental health leaks. Everything is slowly getting worse, and you know it. Every time you try to fix one leak, the other leaks start leaking more.

You might think, hooray, I fixed the engine leak! And then suddenly your wife is leaving you and taking the kids. So you rush to court to deal with that, and park in the wrong place, and your car gets impounded; getting it out costs money you don't have. In trying to deal with all that, your mental health suffers, so you're rude at work, and now your job is at risk. So then you work on being more positive at work, you finally get dual custody of the kids, and pay for the car to be returned... and then the transmission dies.

It's that, but your entire life.