Well that'll teach me to wallow in misery!

The personal growth continues!

I am beginning to think of money like a game instead of like air. I won't die if I don't have it, I'll just fall behind in the game. I have a savings...it's not much, but at least I have enough to cover my butt for a month, and that's better than most people I know. Also, I just did my taxes and...woohoo! My return will pay off almost all of the credit card balance I racked up when I moved!

Tomorrow I have a date (not a Valentine's date, just a friend date) with Z, who, when she found out I'm temping, decried the necessity for a "real job" and told me to start pet sitting like she does. I kind of fear that sort of instability, but I also feel like doing something like that would be a great step toward feeling free from money.

Speaking of freedom, I realized something a few days ago. I was sitting on the subway skimming through The Feminine Mystique (I just can't seem to put it down; now I'm going back through it and highlighting stuff), and I noticed this:

"For the problem that has no name, from which so many women in America suffer today, is caused by adjustment to an image that does not permit them to become what they now can be. It is the growing despair of women who have forfeited their own existence, although by so doing they may also have evaded that lonely, frightened feeling that always comes with freedom."

And it hit me then: I'm free.

...I'm free!

I'M FREE!!

I am free from identifying myself through other people! I am free from making choices for anyone but me! I am free from someone else controlling my money! Free from obligation to things that are unimportant to me! Most of all though, and best of all...I'm free from the bitter anger that came with my previous life. I am free to make myself happy!

Nobody put me in those binds; I was just so busy trying to feel better...about my dad...that I wound up trying to fix my problems with someone else's solution. That life, that particular band-aid, won't work for my gaping wound. I need to treat it properly so that it fully heals. And I'm totally free to do that.

Now that I've had a little taste of freedom I want more, even if that means being a bit lonely and a little scared. I want to be able to bounce away from the constraints of this corporate nine-to-fiver stuff and start making a living doing something that doesn't make me dread getting up in the morning (whatever that is). There's money to be had out there, why can't some of it be for me?

This is my life, and I'm free to live it however I want! I'm so excited!