Shame is paralyzing.
My mom would make me pay her for a stamp. I remember they cost .25 cents at that time. I had a penpal or two - I loved to write long letters full of witty and humorous observations. But I had a hard time paying for a stamp - I don't recall a regular allowance and a paying babysitting or cleaning job was few and far between. My sisters and I would scrounge the parking lot at the nearby 7-11, usually good for several pennies or a nickel even. Finding a quarter was a major ground score! Usually we'd turn right around and buy $.03 tootsie rolls or Bazooka Joe Bubblegum. It was hard to hold on to those pennies and save them for things like stamps.
Money was always tight. I cannot remember a time growing up when we didn't have food stamps. And I do recall standing in line for "government commodities" - oh, and ode to the 5lb brick of :american Cheese"! My parents fought about money a lot. Or, really, my mom nagged and kept track of it and made today's extreme couponers look tame. She'd do stuff like charge her kids for stamps. (I think I wrote only 1 or 2 letters a month too, so it wasn't like I needed a book of stamps every week.) Money flowed through my dad's fingers like water. I can remember the tones but not the words - arguments about money always had my mother's defeated whine offset by y father's angrily defensive outburst of "Oh, come ON, Sue!"
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When I was 25 I had a great job in a printing shop. I got a promotion - and a raise - and I was FINALLY able to get of welfare. For the first time in my life.
Getting off welfare is a lot harder than most people seem to think. You get penalized for earning, instead of encouraged to earn more or save up to move to a better apartment or even buy a house. It was a constant tightrope walk to stay on welfare - there was no in-between phase, just a black/white set of rules clearly stacked in the house's favor.
One time I found a $20 bill on the ground. I knocked on all the apartments in the area to see if they'd lost "something of value" and no one claimed it. I was ecstatic - my mind reeled with possibilities - a Breyer horse model? Shoes? Maybe a cool jeans jacket from the thrift store? No. My parents took the $20 and bought crayons, coloring books, jacks, a four square ball... Nice stuff, but not what I wanted and not what I had in mind when I went to all that effort of looking for the owner. I was crushed. My parents took my power and my creativity, my imagination. I learned that I have no power over money. Money is not my concern. I am not able to make decisions regarding money.
When I was 16, I started college and received all these amazing offers for credit cards. I went insane. Maybe I already was insane, and money just showed me where and how much. All of a sudden, after all my life of being on welfare and living off of next to nothing, I had cash from school grants and credit from Visa. Clothes, a Walkman, art supplies and a rusty VW SuperBeetle. That's all I remember. I bought with no thought to tomorrow, and paying the money back was not even a recognized concept. It took me decades to repair my credit.
Even now it's so easy for me to get into fantasy thinking and just buy something. This typically happens when I'm uncomfortable in another area of life. Money has a way of poiting out that I have some issues to attend, some beliefs to process and re-program.
Shame is paralyzing. So is fear. I used to be nearly catatonic when the daily mail came, fearing a bill - or several! - I had to learn how to own this and be empowered. It may sound silly, but just opening all my mail (snail and electronic) on a daily basis is a huge act of bravery for me.
Sometimes I would do a visualization of my dollars as little sheep, and my checking account as the holding pen at the stockyard. They weren't really my sheep, I was just taking care of them. Some would come in, others would go out. I was a good shepherd and kept them safe in my checking account holding pen.
My dad would complain about "rich people" as if they we're the worst people - judging them, saying he felt judged by them. "Money is the root of all evil" was recited in the house all the time. (Actually, the scripture says that the love of money is the root of evil...) There was definitely a division and we we're on the side of "Not Enough".
I was always so embarrassed to wear clothes that I had made by hand - even worse, that my mother had made! We sewed clothes because we had to, not because it wa a crafty and wise decision with our resources. There is a big difference there. I think the worst for me was the out-of-style shoes. Or really, the no-style shoes. (Today I have a Born boot collection that is amazing and makes me smile!) (And they are all paid for!)
There was a strange conflict with money. We never had enough, and that was bad. People who had more than us we're snobs and jerks, so more money was bad too.
I cannot recall my parents showing me how a check register works, how to record savings deposits, etc. On the contrary, money was something talked about in a hushed, urgent tone. Like arguing about sex - not in front of the kids!
Money scared the shit out of me. It still does from time to time. Money was a way for me to feel awesome - with spending sprees - but then I had horrible guilt and shame afterwards, living far outside my means for clothes and shoes of all things! My spending habits we're like how I learned to eat food: with rigid control and precision, literally starving myself with anorexic behaviors - then bingeing and making myself sick but the distraction, oh the distraction of just for a few moments of not being ME, being out of my head in the comforting illusion of BEING ENOUGH by having enough. Being someone else who was enough in and of herself. I thought that something outside of myself would make me feel whole, worthy, interesting, like I had a future.
Fear at the mailbox, fear when the phone rang. Collections agencies. Writing checks I knew we're bad. I was so afraid all the time of money. It was like fire - a useful tool and necessary to survival, but I viewed it as a mystical element that only a few "chosen" people could handle and ever time I tried to touch it - I got burned - I never tried different ways of handling the torch of money though. I was truly caught in the cycle of insanity. Done the same thing over and over, and expecting different results but not knowing how to stop the carousel of crazy, one which I found myself spinning round and round.
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Posted in Mental Health Post Date 12/30/2022