More of step one.

Okay, how old am I in this story? Let's do 21. I graduated, and my family scared the crap out of me-or I was terrified, anyway-about getting a job. My parents told me they were cutting me off at the end of the summer, so I started looking for one. I remember my mom took me to Ann Taylor and we bought these hideous interview suits, just made for someone else, and I started looking for all these corporate jobs. Nordstrom, finance, real estate, corporate stuff, just the weirdest, non interesting to me things. I remember my therapist was shocked that I was looking in these fields, as I'd never mentioned having any interest in any of this, but I was compelled. I went out on a million humiliating interviews and it was awful. 

I guess what was most awful was feeling completely disconnected from the process- I had no idea who I was, at least when it came to looking for a job, and I was so afraid of having no money, and I just...well, it was like a blind person in a bus station. The only job I'd ever had that I'd liked was being a nanny or working in a pasta store-I'd loved making the pasta with my hands, working with a bunch of guys, when we were done with the order we were done, we didn't have to fake being busy or anything like you did when you worked at a restaurant. (I worked a series of weird low level jobs through college-a maid in a hotel, a liquor store counter clerk, a waitress/busgirl at a restaurant-all jobs I had for a few months and then quit, I'd worked hard but nothing consistent) 

anyway, I had no idea where I was going, no understanding of anything or confidence or insight or anything. I was terrified. I went grey-literally-overnight-I had this huge white streak at the end of the summer in my hair.

At the end of the summer, I got a job at Nordstrom. I hated it. H.a.t.e.d. it. My mom told me I could be a buyer someday and it seemed like the right thing to do. So I did it. It was awful. So I quit-I lied and said I had an ulcer, waited until the boss was on vacation to do it-and enrolled in a teaching credential program. I didn't want to be a teacher, never taught anything, etc etc, but I wanted to be in grad school so my parents would pay for it and I wouldn't have to worry. They loved the idea and paid for my rent, my living expenses, etc while I did it. 

Then I got the idea what I really wanted to do was go to film school. This was very close to my dreams-I loved the movied, I loved writing, it was so exciting I could barely stand it-and I applied to one, really hard to get into program -the grad program in directing at USC. Again, it wasn't based on thinking about it, working some job, etc etc but this sort of random, shot in the dark kind of thing. I got in, and so when I got my teaching credential, literally the week after being offered a job teaching high school in Carlsbad, I enrolled instead at USC. 

My parents paid for a lovely apartment, my car, the tuition, everything. I don't remember being especially profligate with the money, but I certainly didn't save or control the money coming in in any way either. I was like a child in elementary school. 

As it turned out, as hard as I worked-and I did work hard-I wasn't a good director at all. I had no ability with the camera. And, this is important because I think it speaks to my creative abilities and challenges-I wasn't in tune with my own anima either, my own spirit. I wasn't able to "get in that place" necessary to create yet. I was too rushed, too scared, too weird. I did get an A in the screenwriting class-the only A I received, the rest were Fs or incompletes-and probably should have, had I not rushed in without thinking. 

The summer between semesters I got a job-myself, without any help-working for a producer. I remember he wanted, sort of, to hire me in the fall full time, but I went back to school full time. I often think of that as a missed opportunity. I remember I didn't take the job primarily because I was afraid to be away from my dog that long, that she might need me. ?? WTF? I still feel badly about that. 

So I flunked out, and took some classes in the professional writing program at SC. I liked that too, but my parents were beginning to get scary again and threatened to cut me off. Finally they did, and i moved out of my beautiful apartment and in with my jerky boyfriend at the time, with whom I was very unhappy. 

I lived in San Diego with him, miserable, and worked as a teacher. I hated my life, I was suicidal, I felt powerless and miserable. I hated him, but he paid our rent and utilities. He was a Harvard MBA, and making good money, but completely unavailable to me. 

Anyway, finally my therapist talked my parents into supporting me again and they paid for my rent and living expenses when I moved out of our apartment and into my own. I moved into this cute little place in La JOlla with adorable elderly landlords and basically had a great time. I didn't work, after awhile-I forget what it was I was supposed to be doing? Writing? I guess writing, but really I wrote pages and pages in notebooks that I never showed to anyone, and grew a fantastic vegetable garden. I loved it. 

Anyway, So then, I'm 27. I move up to Los Angeles now, this time to be an actress. Same deal, my parents pay and pay and pay for everything-and I actually do take some great classes and learn a lot, but not work. I fight with my family. I don't have the courage to actually publish my written work, or go out on auditions, I just study and write but not share anything. I have a series of underearning, menial jobs-working as a sales clerk, working in a paint store, and then I get a job basically working as a nanny with a little "play therapy" thrown in. I like it because i get to set my own hours and basically go to nursery school for a job. It's the only job since being a nanny I have for more than 3-4 months.  It should also be said that during this time I'm goin through huge amounts of money-thousands and thousands spent on my apartment, trips, clothes, etc. Nothing well managed, nothing substantial like a car or buying a house, just wasted on crap. I call my mom for more and she gives it to me, but we have lots of arguments about it as well, I think. I don't pay bills on time and I go through feast or famine cycles-no savings or anything put away, no budget, nothing. Finally, after a couple of apartments and some big arguments, I decide I'm going to grad school counseling. I do this because my boyfriend at the time is enrolled in a good counseling program, and I figure, why not. I can't imagine just getting a job and it leading to something else, or my creative work leading anywhere. So I go into the counseling program-I get a school loan and my parents pay for some of it, and I finish it, and by then I've met this nice guy who's a failed artist and businessman who loves me, and we get married and I get pregnant the day we get married. Oh, and when I graduate from the grad program, my mom buys me a house. I mean, in cash. I don't know how it comes to pass in that I didn't look at a bunch of houses, just this one, and I don't know why we looked at this even, but we do, and she buys it, and puts it in my name. ANyway, we're living there, and it has a guest house, and I'm on bed rest-the first real job I have ever had-and my parents rent the guest house out back and pay us rent and that's how we even have any money, because my husband isn'tworking to support us. He's watching televison, and gettign jobs and quitting them, etc etc. It's scary and I'm scared and my mom makes it worse by getting upset about her future grandchild living in such squalor. It's important to note nobody was doing any drugs or alcohol-we're just failures. And I'm sitting on this egg, like a chicken, waiting for it to hatch. 

step one.

Write a history of compulsive debting beginning with the first time you remember money related events. Discuss how much money you have borrowed, stolen, spent, the bad checks you have written, and the trouble this has caused you. If applicable, discuss how you have been broke time and again, or overspent, or how you never had enough money to take care of yourself. Discuss what you have done to solve or attempt to solve these problems. 

The first memory I have of money at all was stealing coins off my dad's desk and putting them in my toy horse, I think I was playing mail box or something, and I was dimly aware it probably wasn't okay to put them there. I always thought we were poor, or didn't have enough, maybe that was it. When I was nine or ten I had guinea pigs-about fifteen!-in a hutch in the back yard. I loved them, I spent hours and hours taking them out in the grass and watching them, and one day one of them got some kind of dental problem, and basically starved to death, and then they all had the same problem, and thy all died, without ever being seen by a vet. I assumed, at the time, we didn't have enough money, though now I know that wasn't true. We lived on Country Club drive, and when I was about twelve, after all the pets died, I remember hearing my mom tell my dad something and it ended with, "after all, you're a millionaire", and I felt relieved, like everything was going to be okay after all. I remember asking my mom about saying that, and she denied it. In fact, I don't remember being allowed to discuss money at all. I don't think I got an allowance, or if I got money it wasn't anything regular or in exchange for any kind of chores. 

At Christmas time my grandfather would send these huge checks to us. Ten thousand dollars, made out to everyone in the family. I don't even remember what happened to the money, other than being sort of amazed and feeling impressed. Christmas was never surprise gifts, it was always either money or you picked out what you wanted out of a catalog and someone ordered it for you. I always got what I wanted for Christmas, and more, I don't ever remember being disappointed, but I do remember, again, feeling lonely and bored with just my family. They don't like to socialize so we never had people over for the holidays or went anywhere. 

My first job was when I was thirteen, before boarding school. I worked in this really scary deli, with this crazy boss who yelled at me and everyone else. She must have been bipolar or something. I didn't want the job, but my mother got it for me, and I hated it. There was a terrifying dishwasher lady in the kitchen too, with a shaved head, and I think she liked scaring me just to scare me.  I was terrifed of her  too. I had to work the meat slicer, which in retrospect was also completely illegal. I thought by the end of the summer I'd have no fingers. Funny, I played piano then too, competitively, and here I was, working a job where I had to slice meats and grind up hamburger with no supervision.

The day I went to boarding school, we took a plane to Boston from San Francisco and then drove to New Hampshire. My parents helped me move into my little dorm room, and then as they were leaving my dad handed me a paper bag. He told me to keep it under my bed. My dad said in this bag were enough gold kruugerands than if there was a nuclear war and the currency collapsed I could trade my way out of the country and meet them in Toronto. I was to keep the bag under my bed and never open it. Which I didn't, and it remained under my bed for the whole year. 

I remember spending all my money on clothes. I didn't need clothes, I had money for clothes, I'm sure, but I remember spending endless amounts of time at the mall buying clothes. I was very lonely when I  came home in the summer so I would spend money as recreation, just go to the mall and buy things to bring back to boarding school, where I was still lonely and sad but less so, at least. The mall at home was the only place I remember being happy, just wandering in and out of stores, sort of imagining all the different people I could be other than myself. I always went alone. 

At school, boarding school, I always had more money, I think, than other kids, but I don't think I managed it particularly well. I remember charging coupon books for the snack bar, you could charge them home and somehow I would lose a coupon book, leave it in a jacket pocket, and then just charge another one. I'm sure my mother talked to me over the phone about that-we talked every night on the phone, it was sick and obsessive. I felt really guilty about it too but we talked every night. Anyway, I remember going to the bookstore and buying things by charging it home. Somehow charging it was like, connecting to mom and dad, in a way. I never bought anything illegal or illicit, only things that could be charged home. 

I made more money the summer before senior year working as a nanny, I liked that job, and i made cash, which i never put in the bank or I don't think even had a bank account. I just spent it, or had it in my wallet. I remember refinishing my parent's deck for $500, it felt like honest labor-and I liked having the money, it was a lot of money for 17. 

When I got to college my parents weren't going to get me a car, but then we got there and it was obvious San Diego was a commuter school, you had to have a car or it was easier if you had a car, so they gave me mom's car, which wasn't particularly nice but it wasn't bad either. They gave me a gas card, which I charged, and I remember opening a bank account and one day writing all these checks, which bounced, and calling my mother and asking for more money. It was kind of a funny story, at the time, like, look at what I did, and she just stuck the money in my account, and I felt loved, I guess. 

I was very lonely and sad at college too, very isolated. Somehow money became my ticket to feeling less alone.  Over Christmas my dad, hearing I had stomach pain, bet me a thousand bucks I didn't have appendicitis, which of course I did, and my mother made my father give me the money, which I used over maybe four months when I returned from vacation and the hospital to take myself out to dinner. Alone. I wasn't getting along with my roommate, it felt like she didn't like me anymore, so instead of talking about it with her I just sort of detached from all my former friends and just took myself out to dinner every night with the newspaper. I also shopped. I went to Nordstrom, and had them look up my mom's credit card, and just bought shit. Every week, I bought more stuff, stuff I didn't need, stuff that wasn't really even appropriate to school, just props, really, a wardrobe for a life I didn't have-some suburban, loved, married woman or something, I guess.  Very conservative, moneyed clothes. It was a complete costume. Some stuff I wore, I guess, but some stuff just sat in my closet. 

My mom over vacations would take me shopping. That was maybe the only thing I remember ever doing with her that was fun, or even doing anything with her at all. I remember her buying me stuff felt like i was loved. Clothes. Clothes for situations that didn't exist-interview clothes, conservative date type clothes. Still, it felt good doing that with her, she'd ooh and ahh and buy a bunch of stuff for me. 

I remember I asked her if I could have my own credit card, or some amount to use per month, and she wouldn't give me an amount or even my own card. I remember she said we didn't really have any money, that dad could lose his job at any time and then we'd live in a trailer, but I knew she was lying or thought she was lying. I still do. I remember these long, drawn out, inappropriate phone conversations with her from pay phones on campus, like three hour phone conversations, I don't know if we were arguing about money or what, but somehow I felt empty and lonely and hungry for her attention. We talked like, five times a day. I remember my therapist at the time telling me I shouldn't talk so much on the phone with her, but I couldn't stop. I didn't really have many close friends. 

That summer-after freshman year, I lived in an apartment in san diego with a boarding school friend and my mother paid our rent for the whole summer the first week. I felt lonely there-and scared-and I remember we both worked at this stupid belt store, and I got fired, and then we decided to bag it all and go home. My mom forfeited the rent for the whole summer, I remember the guy said we didn't have to pay for the whole summer, but she insisted. She just told me to come home. I felt like a failure, but relieved to be home. I had a hard time living anywhere without her. I felt very empty and hungry all the time, it was weird. Like a drug or something. I still shopped a lot and bought tons of stuff-makeup, clothes, shoes, anything just to buy it from the store. I had way more stuff than anyone could possibly use. 

I'm sure we got in fights, but I remember mostly just talking on the phone to her a dozen times a day, being very anxious, and depressed most of the time. My friend went home to Connecticut. 

I remember choosing to go on Semester At sea, and then to Italy for my junior year, because someone literally at the pub told me I should go on those programs. It was a complete lark. I remember my mom gave me a big wad of travelers checks, and that was my money for the trip. I don't think I overspent, if anything, I had some left at the end, which i wasted on stuff just to spend it.  I had no plan, no idea how to spend it, or what to buy. I don't remember buying any gifts for anyone either, and i certainly didn't donate any to any of the charities we visited in third world countries. 

Money, I think, was always an argument when I was in college.