By Dune C.
I was at an art instillation the other day and there was a wall with stick-tab papers on it. The instillation was called, “To Do List”, and you were supposed to write something that you wanted ‘to do” on one of the note papers, and you could read what others wrote also. I wrote, “Worry less and trust more.”
Those words surprised me, because I am not what I would call a worrier. My life is going very well these days, and I don’t have much to worry about. However, immediately after I wrote those words, something popped up and I realized that I had been worrying about my finances for the whole first six or seven months of the year. I had dug into my savings on more than one occasion, and even though we had reached our busy months of the year…and the money had started rolling in again, I was still worrying a lot.
So, I suddenly had to stop and examine that behavior—worry.
It was obviously an old behavior. I have been worried about my finances my entire life. When I was a fifteen, my father made sure that I didn’t have any extra money. He wouldn’t allow me to get a job, and he once told me that it was because he wanted to make sure that I didn’t have any money to buy drugs with.
Pot was my drug of choice, and what my dad didn’t know is that the previous year, when I was in the ninth grade, I started using my allowance to buy $10 worth of pot – every week. I would buy $10, sell half, add another $5 to it, and buy another $10 worth at the beginning of the next week.
My dad did quite a few things in raising me, that weren’t all logical. Of course, when he divorced my mother and moved in his 23-year-old girlfriend; I think he was a little bit surprised that I chose to live with them. So he probably was scrambling the best he could at that time; but still.
When I turned 16, I asked him to help me get my drivers license. He agreed, we practiced together, and I passed the test on the very first try. However, the first time I asked him if I could drive the car, he said, “Nope, not until you can afford to pay for your own insurance.
“Well, then I’ll have to get a job.”
“Nope, no job.”
“Then, how will I ever be able to afford insurance?”
“Exactly.”
That’s when he dropped the bomb about not letting me have any money to buy drugs with. By the way, I had never been caught using drugs – ever – it was my two older sisters who paved the way for his decisions, I guess.
And, by the way, we all drank openly in our household by that time (my father, his new girlfriend, and I). Wine with dinner, Drambuie with coffee after dinner, and beer whenever it was hot on the weekends; it was an open bar policy. My dad literally taught me how to drink “socially”, that same year he made sure I never had one extra cent to buy drugs with.
At the end of that school year, there was a dance, and I was trying to figure out a way to get a ride to the dance. My dad’s girlfriend urged me to ask him to borrow the car; but I was more than hesitant. She assured me that it would be okay. So, one day, I summoned all my courage and asked, “Dad, could I borrow the car to take Sheron the dance?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what about the insurance?”
“I’ve had insurance on you since the day you got your license; so you’ll be okay.”
That kind of freaked me out, knowing that I’d been on his insurance for over four months by then; but it wasn’t till a few months later, when he told me, “Oh, I never really had insurance on you. I just figured that if you got into an accident, then the first on would be on the insurance company.”
I remember hating my father, after that.
Oh, I had been really feeling hatred for my dad before. When he was beating on my sister with a dog leash, and especially when I was 13, and I found out that he was constantly cheating on my mother. I was furious at him then (though, of course, I never said anything to either him or my mom). I also was confused, because I told myself that a good son should never hate his father. That was one of the lies my head fed me at a very early age.
I was also pretty angry when he kicked out my mom and divorced her one week after he sold our house and moved the three of us out to Southern California. My sisters and I knew it was coming; we had kind of had a meeting about it before the move, discussing how I would handle the divorce. But it was pretty shitty the way that my dad handled it with my mom. And then he followed up that move, by moving in the girl who had been my mom’s secretary one week later.
However, it wasn’t till I realized that he was literally fucking with me personally about the car thing – just to fuck with me – that I finally began to actively hate him. I used to think that he really liked me, but now I knew that he really didn’t care for me at all. So, I moved out. FUCK HIM.
That’s not really true, he and his soon-to-be “new wife” moved to Dallas Texas, and I arranged to stay in Redondo Beach and live with my best friend’s family. So, in retrospect, he moved away from me; but I was certainly done with living with him. Fuck him.
So, at 16, I continued to find ways to live with absolutely no money. I still wasn’t working (only the occasional odd job), and my dad did pay some money for room and board; but I never had an extra cent to spend on anything. This fact didn’t stop me from buying and smoking pot, or alcohol, or whatever I could get my hands on. In other words, though, I have worried about money my entire adult life (which started at 16).
So here I am at 57, in recovery again for twelve years, and I’m in the best financial shape I’ve ever been.
At one point, I owed the IRS $500,000 in back taxes and fees, I owed my first ex-wife $30,000 in back child support (including the penalties), and I had raised five children on welfare for over 8 years. I have been in financial addiction for most of my life, and financial worry was very familiar to me.
But things have changed. When I started working my steps this time around, I decided that I had to get clean financially as well as from drugs. I was already paying my bills on time, and I made a point to be reasonable with my second ex-wife in the divorce; but that also meant getting clean with the IRS. I did exactly what my lawyer told me to do (and what working steps had taught me); I did one thing at a time. I got every piece of paper he needed, I filed years of back taxes, and he was able to put together an Offer and Compromise Agreement with the Feds.
I also worked out a deal with my first ex-wife to pay off my back-child support in one lump sum. Believe me, when I sent off that check, I had to pray and trust; because she had to follow through on her end and drop the case with the district attorney—but I had to mail her the money first. I did, and she did, and in a short period of a year or so; I was free of the IRS, and I was free of the district attorney, and I was also free of my (still using) second ex. Amazing!
I also did something else. When I got to my 4th step, I was doing the readings and getting ready to start answering the questions in the NA Step Working Guide. But just then I found a pamphlet at one of the churches my regular Friday night meeting was held at. The Pamphlet was called Financial Freedom, and there were a set of questions in that booklet designed exactly like a 4th step inventory for financial addiction. I literally wrote forty five pages on my financial insanity—before I even bean the regular questions for the 4th step. Then, of course, I shared all that with my sponsor.
I’ve done some work my financial addiction. I have paid every bill, on time, for the past ten years with only a very few accidental exceptions. I have paid my taxes every year, and even look forward to paying my quarterly taxes now (I think of it as a savings account). A friend gave me some basic financial advice about life insurance, savings, and retirement. So, I started with life insurance, then I began to put money into savings, and finally at the age of 50 opened my very first retirement account.
I financed a car, which I had not been able to do for years, and yes, my credit wasn’t great; so I had to pay a little higher interest than I’d like to have. But I also paid the car off in three years instead of five. Recently I financed another car, and my credit score was over 800, and I pay 1% interest. I’m planning on paying this one off early as well.
I paid my second ex-wife alimony every month, every cent, on time, until she passed away (and I even paid her $250 extra every month after our first agreement allowed me to stop paying that amount). I also paid the divorce lawyer every cent I owed him, and the tax lawyer every cent I owed him. These were all firsts for me.
I’m re-married again to a lovely woman who also in recovery and is financially responsible (which neither of my previous partners had ever been). We own a home together now (she bought it, and I pay for it), but it works for us. We save to travel, and we travel multiple times a year. I even decided on a living amends (9th step) of giving money to those I can help, as a way to pay back for all those years when I took from everyone I could. I’ve given away thousands of dollars to friends, relatives, and even strangers; when I felt that a little bit of money could help them out, and I literally don’t expect to get any of it back. I donate to NA, to public television, to the ACLU, and I usually sponsor my family and friends in whatever fund raisers they are involved in.
I am the most financially secure person I’ve ever been, and still, I found myself worrying about money.
“Why?”
Is it that I don’t think I can trust myself? “No.” Though I felt that for most of my life, but now I pretty much trust myself. I’ve done enough 9th and 10th steps to know that even if I screw up, I’ll make amends for it when I do.
Is it because I’m worried that the world will change, and my unlimited supply will suddenly dry up? “No, not really.” I trust my higher power, and I really don’t live in deprivation any more in any way.
Is it because I started using my savings this year to get by? “Yes, that’s certainly a part of it.”
I examined that fact a little bit deeper. My head tells me that is what my savings are for (right?) to cover if I ever need it. “Yes, that’s true, but I was a little frightened when I used so much of it!”
So, what happened?
Well, I brought my daughter on board in my business, and I knew that would affect our first quarter of the year, because that’s our slowest time of the year. She is a blessing, she does a great job, and we’ve generated some new business to cover her expenses; but that’s only one thing that happened.
I also invested close to $4,000 in a new website, new promotional materials, and new sales tools. That kind of investment might have been better timed later in the year, that’s for sure. But we started the plans for this process six months earlier, when we were in our busy time; it just happened that the actual money came due during our slow period. Luckily this is an expense that doesn’t happen every year.
Also, I had a weird thing happen. I had to have my gall bladder taken out in an emergency surgery. I’ve had gall stones for years, but in February of this year, I wound up in the emergency room while we were visiting Las Vegas to see our granddaughter dance in a ballet competition. I was able to wait for the surgery till I got back home, but between the Emergency Room stay, the actual surgery, and my lost work hours; that little inconvenience cost me over $8,000 in the first quarter of the year also. I paid it all, amazingly enough (with my past), and that’s where the largest chunk of my savings went. I just didn’t realize that fact till I really looked at it.
So, this all brings me back to, “Worry less and trust more.”
I was once playing a game that my new wife, Susie, taught me. It’s called the Alphabet game. You go through the alphabet one letter at a time and think of things that start with that letter that fall into a certain category. You might think of fruits, and then name…Apple, Banana, Cherry, etc. This one night, I was trying to get to sleep, and I decided to do the alphabet game with qualities of my higher power. So…I was thinking through the letters…almighty, benevolent, compassionate…kind, loving…etc.
Finally, I came to the letter “R”, and I thought of the word REAL. Suddenly I was struck that If I truly believe that my higher power is real—then what the hell am I worrying about? This was years ago, but when I realized that I was worrying again, I remembered that realization.
I believe that my higher power is real. I thank my higher power every day for taking my will and my life, for guiding me in my recovery, and for showing me how to live. I literally turn my life over to the care of a power greater than myself every single day.
I believe that I worry because it’s a bad habit. It’s what we in recovery call a character defect. I am not talking about planning or looking at possible problems, I’m talking about worry. That nagging feeling that something is not right; that feeling doesn’t do anything productive at all, and it repeats over and over again obsessively.
When I realized that I was worrying again. When I looked at things realistically (continuing to take personal inventory), and when I saw what I was doing, I turned it all over one more time. Since then, I’ve been worrying less and trusting more.
It’s so funny how my higher power works.
Who would have thought that a simple art exhibit would help me to learn how to trust again?
Dune C. 