Grace

Money goes to money, a wise woman once said.

Yes, I have an almost unhealthy obsession with money, wealth, and everything else involved with it. I suppose it's because I've never fully dealt with my money issues--no matter how much money I make, or how little, I always feel like a welfare queen (despite never being on welfare).

I was at HR Block a few days ago and I found out I made $10,000 last year than I did the year before, and this is on one-income, and going to school full time. After I went back to school, I dropped all my weird side jobs to focus on schooling, and I had worried about my plunging wages--only to find out later that I would double my salary in less than a year.

The irony of it all. I had briefly considered applying for food stamps to alleviate all my college costs, pick up catering shifts somewhere. It's a good thing I was too tired to seriously pursue any of these options, or I would have worked myself to my demise.

But money, I have the absolute lack of balance surrounding this issue; I want to say because there's been such an extreme cases of wealth, and lack thereof in my gene pool that to this day, I'm still feeling the ill effects of it. The petit mal seizure of lives lost, and lives forever altered by greed, money, and everything else in between ripples in my veins, almost everyday it seems like.

And so, I intentionally live the life of a pauper, at least on paper. My clothes are secondhand, and if not, they're on sale. My possessions are minimal, and I de-clutter way more than people do in a whole year. I give money to charity on a fairly regular basis, I look at the prices in a menu when I consider what to order.

Something I wish for, nearly every day: finding balance, knowing I have enough.