Every time I cried and you wiped my tears with dollar bills, I learned you didn’t want me.
Every time our “quality time” had to be shopping, I learned that my feelings weren’t invited.
Every time I broke down from the pain of feeling so unloved and you listed all the things you’d bought me as if that somehow made it OK, I learned that you would do anything to avoid loving me.
I finally made peace with the knowledge that you didn’t and won’t ever love me only to discover that scar runs deep and long into other places – into my relationship with money itself. Because what if I become like you?
What if one day I wake up and I’ve spent years and thousands pushing people away, avoiding loving them, and the only thing left to wipe my tears is the crisp note and the pain of you.
Or worse, what if someone thinks for even one second that I would rather buy them things than love them.
It’s weird how you’ve made me fear becoming things that are so unlike me it’s almost laughable that I’m afraid of it. How someone whose first instinct is to love, to spend time, to hug, to comfort, to help, is terrified that some spare cash will make her cold and distant. How someone “too sensitive” and “too trusting” is so worried that something as meaningless as money can change her entire personality.
I will always choose the mess of connection because it is worth it.
I will always choose the pain of love because without it life is meaningless.
It is safe for me to make money because I will never be like you. I could never be like you. I am like me and I am the cycle breaker.
