I'll start with misfortune.
Whenever something bad happens to a person, someone inevitably will say or think or insinuate "that poor girl" (or woman/girl/child/man/boy/person/etc)".
As someone who has had more than her fair share of misfortune (which you will likely eventually hear about as this blog journal progresses 😏), that phrase has been used about me more times than I'd like to admit. It has always made me very uncomfortable as pity is not something I aspire to attain; also, I come from a long line of victims and since I am the black sheep of the family, am vehemently opposed to being a victim of anything or anyone.
You see, it seems to me that every single bad thing that's ever happened to me has taught me a valuable lesson that I never would have learned if I hadn't gone through the bad thing.
Of course, I am not saying that I am walking around hoping for bad things - God forbid - just so I can learn and grow and evolve. But bad things are inevitable and if our eyes are open and we're paying attention to our own lives, it is from those things that we learn not only our most valuable lessons, but through them we experience endurance, fortitude, integrity, insight, and the list goes on and on. Maybe the bad thing wouldn't be as bad if we remembered to look for the lesson(s).
I used to a be the senior editor of many world famous reference books and publications. Then I got sick and the stress and demands of that position were making me worse so I had to give up my career.
I remember sitting home a week or two after my last day at the publishing house and all of a sudden the thought "well, who am I now?" popped into my head. It was a pure "poor girl, had to give up her high-paying, status-filled career" moment. I panicked. I thought that I had lost my identity because my identity had become so wrapped up as Sharon, Senior Editor. Thankfully, I forced myself to get over it - and get over myself - and realize that my life is not my job/job title. I can't tell you how many amazing experiences and endeavors I have since had and would have missed out on if I had stayed stuck in an office dealing with corporate bureaucracy and insane deadlines as Sharon, Senior Editor.
I would not be who I am if not for all the times I was a "poor girl".
I'll finish with financial.
In one of the Real Housewives shows, someone says "I was poor, then I was rich, then I was poor again. Rich is definitely better." I couldn't agree more...just maybe for a little bit of different reasons.
When I was very little we were real deal poor. My divorced mother was a waitress in NJ diners. She received $25 a month from my father for child support and I don't think that was paid regularly. Needless to say, we were on welfare. She shopped at Goodwill. Sometimes we ate lumpy farina or baloney with onions or something called Shit On A Shingle for dinner (ground beef cooked in flour/milk gravy served over white bread). We weren't alone in being poor and I don't ever remember lamenting over our poor-ness. Seemingly everyone in our Elizabeth, NJ neighborhood was in the same or similar boat.
Around the time I was 5 or 6, my mother met my future stepfather and - POOF!- suddenly we weren't poor anymore. Actually we were pretty well-off, definitely wealthy, maybe even rich. My step-father was a successful Italian mason contractor and we didn't want for anything. I was plucked out of school every winter as we snowbirded our way to Miami Beach for a few months. As luck would have it, I won the Stepfather Lottery and was the apple of his eye almost immediately. I was his shadow, where he went I went, and man did he love to spoil me.
Logically, I should have grown up and continued with that kind of life but it didn't work out that way. I chose what I naïvely thought was love over logic and that left me with a serious cash flow problem many, many (many) times. Like, rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul-so-that-Paul-doesn't-turn-off-the-electricity kind of problems. (I was always too proud to ask my parents for bailouts.) I married way too young the first time which was an unhappy and short-lived marriage (but I did get an amazing daughter from the union) and not too long after that one ended, I married again, disastrously. Husband #2 was bipolar with a strong aversion to medication and working for a living. This can be referred to as my Creative Ways To Pay Bills Era. In other words, I was definitely not well-off (literally and figuratively). One time I sent my well-loved winter coat to the dry cleaner...and never picked it up because I could not afford the $10 bill. That's a true story.
I have not ever been the type to make my problems anyone else's plus I was appalled that I found myself in this situation so I sucked it up and dealt with it to the best of my ability. Mind you, I was still gainfully employed in publishing during this era but it was a 3-person household and I was the only one of those persons who had steady income.
I paid our not cheap rent on time every single month since having a roof over my daughter's head was my main priority. After that, as I said, I robbed from Peter to pay Paul to keep the lights on and the heat running.
I made breakfast for dinner. Or soup for dinner.
I bought any new clothes we needed at Walmart.
I walked a lot.
I rode my bike.
I checked hundreds of books out of the library.
I painted and drew.
I wrote.
At some point, I realized that being poor, so to speak, didn't suck.
In fact, I was having a pretty good time being broke. My daughter and I (didn't care much what Psycho was doing or not doing...especially since he was mostly just sitting on the couch for months or maybe even years at a time.) might not have been dining out or taking vacations or wearing high end anything but you know what? We were having big fun anyway. We weren't feeling sorry for ourselves, that is for sure. My daughter had much of what the other kids had except for the fancy clothes and vacations but I kind of think we both had so much more.
I still think it was during this time that we had our best quality time, together and individually.
We were money poor but life rich.
I certainly am not saying that being broke is better than not being broke because that's obviously untrue.
I'm saying that the times that good fortune was not shining down upon me are the times that I learned the most valuable lessons and grew from them.
Humbly,
Sharon
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