When Money Brings Me To Tears

I originally emailed this story to a friend, but it says a lot about life over the last few weeks so I am re-posting it here for your reading pleasure.

Today my DH came home and said, "I've got a present for you!" and made me close my eyes. When I opened them I was looking at a (long and detailed) piece of paper with a bunch of numbers on it which took me a minute to work out. My gift was his first payslip - because even though he only started on Monday, the pay period ends tomorrow so he got paid for 3 days of work.

My eyes went to the bottom line (of course) and I noticed this - that my husband got paid more in 3 days of working than I get paid for more than a MONTH of working...and no guesses as to who works harder (certainly physically. Mentally it could probably go either way.)

So I did what any emotional, exhausted, sick woman would do. I buried myself in his arms and I burst into tears. Happy tears mostly but also overwhelmed tears, because:

1) It just seems so damn unfair (the pay difference),

2) I am so grateful for that money you have no idea. I literally spent a good hour today working out which bills I could avoid paying so the mortgage can get paid on Tuesday (and had come up with no workable solution),

3) I'm exhausted from playing the money game and living in fear of Tuesdays. I've spent months and months and months managing to keep our chins above water (and fucking it up a couple of times so we nearly drowned.) I've spent all this time trying to figure out how to keep my family afloat on the smell of an oily rag and it's just mentally exhausted me. Tuesdays is when our mortgage goes out (hence my fear of Tuesdays),

4) I'm sick and feel horrendous but had so much to do today that I've not allowed myself to be sick, and so I was (almost) upset that it's so damn easy for him to just go to work, have no responsibilities, and take home that amount of cash and for a split second I wanted that freedom, too,

5) Bloody grateful his job started *exactly* in the same week I no longer have to go to my second job, effectively giving me the freedom I so desperately need to make my business into what I believe it can be,

6) Feeling proud of myself for managing to do #3, even though #3 was horrible, I still made us to the finish line (mostly. Now need to work on paying down debt in an aggressive fashion but that's much easier on me mentally),

7) Feeling exceptionally glad that I pursued all the things for the business I've pursued, even when I was totally unsure of their potential success, because even though I did not know it, it was the first of MANY leaps of faith I would be taking in the coming months/years,

and

8) Just... felt like some big giant boulders rolled off my shoulders today and so I cried them away.

We're nowhere near being out of the woods (and DH still has to work a crappy job on the weekends to give us some breathing space and the chance to get rid of some of the debt)...but....I'm REALLY doing this. I'm surviving. I'm BETTER than surviving.

I cried and cried, and DH hugged me tight, stroked my hair and said, "Firstly, I am so damn proud of you...It's YOU who has kept me and this family going for all these months and you should be really proud of yourself, too. Secondly, the pay difference is really only because I've had twenty more years on you of working my arse off."

...it's been a long couple of months. But, you know, Universe and all yadda yadda...PROGRESS.