What Money Worries Save You From Feeling

When I didn’t have money worries this past year, it was like I had ripped out old carpet and found the rot that was beneath. Worrying about money since I was a kid proved a distraction so, perhaps, I didn’t have to deal with the sadness and grief and confusion that comes with relinquishment and adoption. How do you properly process feelings that no one’s talking about? How do you deal, as a kid, with the confusion of having two mothers when the mother you have burst into tears when you mention the other? How do you deal with the grief of loss when it shows up as a stomach ache and those around you say you must have eaten something that didn’t agree with you?

It’s like relinquishment and adoption drop baggage into the bodies of children, baggage with no identifying tags, no explanation. The bodies feel the weight of the baggage, the edges, the not-rightness of having baggage in their guts and under their heart and maybe some even in their legs and arms and neck and head. It’s worrisome to have a body full of baggage with no clue of what’s going on, so it makes sense that worrying about money would provide an almost necessary outlet for this energy. You have to worry about something when you have Samsonite in your solar plexus and can’t move with the same abandon other kids do!

This past year as been a slow release of feelings. Lots of sadness. Lots of anger. Lots of grief. I have spent the year avoiding contact with people because I have felt not good. Not happy. Not like myself. I have felt like the yuck you find after pulling up old carpet. I’d be watching Somebody Feed Phil and would suddenly burst into tears. This is not new behavior—I’ve had a lifetime of feelings coming out of nowhere—what was new was I had the sense I knew what was happening this time. I could feel the interior of my body crumbling. Sometimes it felt as if my body were made of blocks kids would play with and that those blocks were all falling down. Sometimes if felt as if my body were held together by caulk and all the caulk was melting. These feelings were often accompanied with tears—a melting internally and externally. Goodbye, Mother. Goodbye, Fathers. All of you. Goodbye, childhood. Goodbye to the me who had been a daughter. Goodbye to not knowing who I was.

I am a body in a room. I am writing about my feelings. My dog is in the other room, sleeping. The door is open and cold air comes in. Summers in Santa Cruz mean coats in the morning.

A few weeks ago I did MDMA and asked it to show me anger because I had not been able to find it. MDMA is efficient. It brought me into the heart of fury, and I had a tantrum. I kicked and thrashed around until anger had had its say. The next day, it was like I was preparing for a colonoscopy. Stuff came out and out and out until I was empty.

Since then, my stomach and guts, which have been gassy and distracting for most of my life, have been calm. It’s like I’ve been walking in a wind tunnel all my life and suddenly the air is still. It makes me feel like a different person in a different world, all the while also feeling like myself, here. So this is what abdominal peace feels like.

Wow.

Money worries, to the brain, I think, are nothing compared to feeling mother loss. The brain is trying to protect us, trying to keep us from having feelings it thinks will overwhelm or destroy us. This part of the brain doesn’t know we are grown ups, doesn’t know we can get a therapist. This part of the brain will throw anything our way to keep us from hurting; it will even throw pain at us. The pain of not enough. The painful belief of I’ll never have enough money to take care of myself when, if you really look at that belief, really cut your expenses and get a second job, can often be disproved. When you believe you don’t have enough money it’s easier to waste it because who cares anyway—what difference does it make if you spend instead of save when you’ll never have enough regardless?

That’s all for now. I want to go take a nap.