This post was copied from an old blog that I no longer keep up. It was originally published on March 9, 2009.
I had a dream last night that made clear to me how I've been feeling. I know most people don't need their dreams to tell them how they feel, but I've always had problems acknowledging my own feelings. Blame it on my mother. That's pretty much where I place the blame for most of my psychological problems. (Well... I can probably lay a few problems on my father... and genetics may have something to do with it...) Anyway, even though I've been working for years to let myself be aware of and feel my emotions, I still have problems admitting to myself that I feel "negative" emotions. To paraphrase my mother,"A good person doesn't get angry. A good person doesn't feel jealous. A good person will take care of everyone else and not want anything for themselves." Thus taking care of yourself, if it in any way interferes with taking care of someone else, is selfish and bad. I have trouble believing that a "good" person could survive childhood, much less adulthood. But I tried to be “good” as hard as I could.
I tried so hard to be a "good" person that it nearly killed me. (My first attempted suicide at 15 was because I believed that I wasn't a good enough person to live.) Trying to be “good” definitely left me psychologically disabled. Yes, literally, disabled. I can't function in society. I can't hold down a job. I have extreme difficulty making and maintaining friends. And even small amounts of stress can cause physiological problems like migraines and stomach issues. Some days, I can function almost normally, but other days, just leaving the house to run errands is more than I can handle. So... see what trying to be a "good" person has done to me. Nevertheless, there is a part of me that still tries to be "good". Stuff that was programmed into you with your baby food isn't gotten rid of that easily. I still automatically put other's needs before my own. Although now "others" is limited to people I actually care for. My husband for example...
Before I go further, I need to explain something about my view of money. I inherited some money from my parents when they died. It's how I've survived since I can't hold down a job. I've learned to live VERY frugally. When I finally gave up on trying to hold down a job (I tried various sorts of jobs for over 10 years, never keeping a single one for more than a few months. Most didn't last more than 3 weeks.), I decided that I would just live as frugally as possible, and when I ran out of money, I would simply kill myself. At the time, I didn't have a husband or any really close friends, so my death wouldn't really cause anyone a problem. (See, even when considering suicide, I have to make sure that I'm not causing anyone else any inconvenience. To this day, I only have one close friend beside my husband and I think she would feel more guilty at not saving me rather than sad at the loss of a friend.) So... for many years, I equated spending money with impending death. I was VERY frugal.
To continue... My husband is horse mad. I like horses, but I'm not horse mad. But my husband has always wanted a horse and his own ranch to ride his horse around on. And since he is an experienced software engineer, you would think that he makes good money and wouldn't have to worry too much about job security. So I was willing to spend a good chunk of MY money to put a down payment on twenty acres of land so that we could build a house and a barn and live my husband's dream. I was also planning to use the money from the sale of MY house(best money I ever spent) to pay off most of the construction loan for building the new house. It seemed like a good plan. However...
My husband decided he wanted his own horse now rather than later. And since, I thought that we were doing well enough financially, I went along with him. We ended up rescuing a very nice horse that had been badly neglected. We only paid $20 to buy the horse, but we've since spent close to ten thousand on vet bills, boarding fees, tack and various horse related items. My husband was in charge of these things and he was the one who paid the credit card(I take care of the mortgage, insurance, property taxes, etc...), so I didn't realize how much money he'd been spending. He'd also been spending a lot on eating out for lunch and such. And just recently, he confessed to me that we had built up a huge amount of credit card debt.
Now, I'd already been living fairly frugally because I knew that building our new house was going to be very expensive. (and because I will probably always be frugal.) And even though I knew that my husband wasn't living all that frugally, I thought that it was okay. Since he was the one making the money, he should be allowed to spend a little more of it. (Although I had been trying for months to convince him to spend less on eating out.) I figured that it wouldn't be much longer until we could build our new home, sell my house, and things would be a bit easier financially. Now, I realize that it will be years before we get ourselves enough out of debt to even consider trying to get a construction loan. All my living frugally has accomplished was to let my husband take longer before telling me how bad our credit card debt was. Now I have to live even more frugally. And I have to be the dominant one(the nagging wife, which I DON'T want to be) and insist that my husband learn how to live frugally (which admittedly he seems to finally be beginning-- just beginning-- to understand).
So... my dream... My husband and I were at some sort of get together in an outdoor restaurant. I let everyone get their food before me and when I got to the counter, the serving girl told me they were out of brisket, all they had left was some bread. So, even though I was disappointed, I took the bread and ate it while everyone else, including my husband, enjoyed their brisket. Then it was time for desert. My friend D had brought some strawberries, vanilla cream and cake. I let D and my husband get their desert, and when I got to the counter, guess what... All they had left were a few little pieces of strawberry. No cream. No cake. And I had really wanted some vanilla cream. I lost it. I screamed and threw my purse across the courtyard. My husband, holding his VERY LARGE serving of desert in his hand came over, patted my shoulder and said,"It will be okay." and went back to eating his desert. I got even more angry and grabbed my purse strap and threw it over the wall surrounding the courtyard where everyone was eating. Then knowing that even though I was infuriated, I needed to get my purse back (because no one else was going to do it), I left the courtyard to find my way around the wall and get my purse. My husband actually followed me out, but instead of trying to go find my purse, he just wanted to get in his car and go home. I ran away from him and made my way through a crowded department store to the back alley behind the wall and started looking for my purse all by myself. I searched for hours, but never found it.
It's not exactly difficult to interpret this dream. I let my husband have everything he wants even though it means that there is nothing left for me. And when it becomes apparent that there is real financial difficulty, my husband just states that,"It will be okay" without actually trying to fix anything. I'm the only one that understands that there is a real problem and that just going on with our life as usual isn't going to solve anything. I'm the one digging through the back alleys trying to salvage our finances, while hubby goes home to watch tv and play on his computer.
It's not a very nice dream. And probably not entirely fair to my husband. He is much younger than me and basically went from living with his parents to living with me. He has had neither the time nor the experience to learn as much about finances as I have. But that doesn't make me feel any better, and although it explains things, it doesn't fix them. And I'm just tired of denying myself and excusing him from his mistakes.
I'm tired of being "good".
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