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There is this thing that keeps happening with me and money. Not a love-hate relationship exactly. More of a problem with definitions, with delineation of roles and delegation of responsibilities. A very American problem, I know, but a part of my life that trips me up and clips my wings and makes me a sucker for short-term fixes and impractical “be un-poor soonest” schemes. I am the one doing all the tripping/clipping/suckering/scheming, to be clear. Which is not quite a relief, and in fact may turn out to be the sticking point I need to screw my courage to. Except I can’t quite make out what comes after that part.

The problem is stacked up in teetering piles on my desk, glaring in copious amounts of red ink when I peek through my fingers at the cringe-causing state of my personal balance sheet, haunting my dreams to the point that last night’s featured me enforcing cost-cutting measures (watering down the juice, rationing the paper towels) at the daycare I was running with Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens (hatless, but far from hapless, even in such an unlikely setting). And as good as that dream might have been, the money worry chewed scenery right and left.

Never enough, with the dollars, and certainly never extra when it would be nice to have. It was pointed out to me some months ago that I was not in a position to afford my life. That astute observation was met with some resistance in the form of my usual heel-dragging and some petulance that is still being worked out of my psyche. Raised Catholic – repression is hell on any attempts to live a non-self-righteous life.

But I took some of the necessary steps to get closer to solvency. The big one was collapsing some of my life from a 2-bedroom living situation, first-floor flat all to myself, into one of those bedrooms which now is also a craft room and a schoolwork room and a get-ready room and the place where I hang my delicate laundry to dry. The living room and dining room are now shared spaces, the second bedroom is no longer a craft/guest room but my roommate’s room. I did maintain dominance over the kitchen, though fair warning was given and the outcomes are favorable to both parties. Or at least acceptable, I hope.

I have sung my sad forlorn lament to many and most have not had the patience to hear much beyond “my bedroom is no longer my sanctuary” before reminding me, and rightly so, that my monthly expenses have been cut in half, verily and forsooth. They may not use those exact words, but they also don’t tell me to shut up. I can read between the lines, though, and recognize that it is all to the good to actually live my reality as a graduate student prudently subsidizing a reasonably comfortable present with the promise of my bright salaried tomorrow rather than blissing out in the sheik-like opulence of the unsustainable parallel world I had allowed myself to become accustomed to. My own personal bubble! I am a true patriot, it seems.

But it is still there, this money that I owe and will go on owing, that I will still spend and have continued to spend, whether I need to or not. And therein lies the rub, back to my parents aggravating me to no end with their insistence that I make a distinction between wants and needs. So many things are both! Why can’t they see that?

What I’m staring at now, in the middle of another night that I am not doing well with sleeping through, is a lot of stuff that I have put off dealing with because I don’t think I should have to. I’m protesting by regressing, to a point where I am not cleaning up my actual physical mess of CDs (really) and clothes that need mending and yarn that needs sorting and so many things that I had handled in my own way (by putting them in other rooms). I want things back the way they were. I need things to be different than they are. Maybe, just maybe, I need things to be different than they were, too. Maybe I have gotten so used to not getting what I want, or having it and losing it, that I give up on what I need way too soon.