Learning To Be Okay Part 1

I will be occasionally baring my soul to y'all, as I am working very hard on my mental health recovery. I see a new psychologist soon. I spoke with her at length over the phone. Our goal in working together will be to help me cope with my mental illnesses, not irradicate them completely. Therapy is not a magic pill, and I will have to do hard, dark, terrifying work in my mind and in my life in order to help myself. I'm scared about doing this work, but I am ready for it. A really good way for me personally to work through issues is to write about them. I will title these posts "Learning to Be Okay Part __," so if you don't want to or can't read them, you'll know which ones to skip. Today, a certain issue is running around and around in my brain. In an attempt to start working on it, I write about it here:

I haven't the slightest idea how to not worry about money. I grew up worried about it. I have saved and scrimped and budgeted and been terrified of not having enough since I can remember. In high school, when I finally had some income of my own, I hated spending any of it. I cried every time I had to make a purchase that was necessary. In college, I wore my shoes and clothes until they were almost indecent with the number of holes in them. My friends just learned to accept it as one of my quirks. Once I was working for a living, my medical expenses made it so I never had enough money. I ended up putting groceries on a credit card just so I could eat enough food to be nutritionally balanced. I bemoaned the price of milk when it went up to almost four dollars a gallon. I hated walking by the produce section, full of gorgeous fruits and vegetables I could not afford and could not medically eat. The special diets I was on were so expensive, and I cried after every grocery trip. 

When I met my husband, I was working a job that my health could not handle. I was too terrified of being homeless or not being able to afford my treatments to stop, even though my health was steadily declining and I was visiting emergency rooms every other week. When my now husband, then boyfriend, insisted on helping to support me, I had so much guilt that I was physically ill. I was terrified to the point of wild panic that everyone who knew him might think I was taking advantage of him. I was also so incredibly angry at my body. I had graduated with honors from a top liberal arts college, and here I was unable to pay for groceries and medications to keep myself alive.

Fast-forward to now. My husband has a good job. We have a safe place to live. My pantry has the weird powders and supplements that I need for my stomach issues. My medicine drawer has the medications I need to keep myself breathing. I haven't been to the hospital in over three months. And I honestly don't know how to handle this change. I am convinced somewhere deep in my brain that one day I will wake up with nothing and have to fight for food again, working jobs I cannot physically handle and destroying my body in the process. 

The positive side of this is that I am always on the lookout for sales and coupons. I can't bring myself to buy anything without researching it thoroughly, so we always end up with good quality items. And my husband has been amazing about this. When he found out that my shoes had holes in them, he took me to buy new ones and encouraged me to throw the old ones away. When he noticed that I had hardly any clothes that fit, he took me to buy some new ones. I insisted on taking advantage of the clearance racks and sales, and he sweetly indulged me in that little eccentricity. 

I keep frantically donating and giving to people who don't have enough, as I hate that there are people in the world who go through what I did and I absolutely loathe that there are people who have it worse. I want to give them all a safe place to live and a loving family, but since I can't do that, I donate my clothes that still have wear in them and anything that I can't use goes to charity.

I have this deep fear inside me that I will someday become materialistic out of nowhere. I know it isn't really a thing I should be afraid of, as this isn't in my nature. But I still worry. What if some people still do secretly think that I am taking advantage of my dear husband, as I do not look sick to the un-knowing eye? I know that I worry about these things more than I should, because I sometimes rave about them during panic attacks when I am not in control of what I am saying. My ever-patient husband holds me and comforts me while I cry, and then insists on not letting me wear shoes whose soles are literally falling off. I am grateful for him every single day. He is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I love him.

Now if you'll excuse me, my dogs are barking at the neighbor dogs, and I must thank them for their diligent protection of me. They are very, very good dogs.