thankless
11-26-2013,

It has been our tradition, for many years, to celebrate Thanksgiving by doing a huge holiday shopping spree for our local shelter/soup/kitchen/food pantry. I have always done this because it is highly symbolic to me. If we can afford to help others, we are not truly poor ourselves and therefore we must have something to be thankful for (if you can follow that weird logic). And we have maintained the tradition, despite having to downsize it a bit every year, due to our ever-reduced circumstances.

Until this year. This is apparently the tipping point--the year when we finally slid over into poverty. Because we can barely afford to make ends meet, and we had to forego our seasonal generosity so we could pay our bills.

Since we cancelled/can't afford the Pfister, and P&E can't host after all, due to health problems, Spouse asked me if he should just make dinner at home for Thanksgiving.

I told him "I don't give a f*ck--as far as I'm concerned, it's just another Thursday. Make Hamburger Helper if you want. If I could go to work, I would. What the hell do you suppose I could find to be thankful for?"

Not well received. But considering the circumstances (I was right about him not working and lying--again--about it), what the hell was he thinking by even asking such a stupid question?

I was thinking about it on the way to work this morning, and wondering what I could have done differently. Did he not understand that my willingness to scrimp and save in the beginning was based on the fact that scrimping and saving isn't a lifestyle--it's a means to an end? I was raised with the idea that you do that stuff with a goal in sight, working towards things getting better. It isn't supposed to drag out into some kind of subsistence scratching to survive, with no point or purpose but continued survival!

I know he wasn't raised that way, but he isn't stupid! A guy that bright shouldn't let the fact that his parents were losers keep him from being a winner--or at least a trier!

At any rate, here I am, three decades on, coming to the belated realization that my upright, strait-laced, honest & aboveboard upbringing in fiscal matters is no match for my late MIL's indoctrination. She raised them to be shifty and sneaky and dishonest. To treat other people's trust as something to be manipulated and used. To run away, to try to hide from debt and other unpleasant realities. And that is what he has been doing his whole life.

So I have to decide if I can walk away, or if I need to just keep sucking it up. Big issue, big decision. I have always taken marriage vows so seriously. Better or Worse, Sickness or Health, Richer or Poorer...I have really, honestly tried.

And maybe I put up with it because of the way my parents raised ME. Being the scape-goat of my narcissistic mom and sucking up the toxic garbage she dumped on me. The example of my parents' marriage: two mismatched marital martyrs who have battled through 60 years together. The fact that those aspect of my childhood instilled in me a deep need for peace--at any price.

I'm not excusing his behavior; by saying it is my fault. But the fact that I have been putting up with it since 1983? Definitely the blame lies with me.

I do love him, still. And what we have that is good, is very good. I would hate to lose it.

But it is costing me so dear.