The number one thing I wanted more than anything else was to be able to support my parents. I wanted to help them buy the house/property of their dreams in the location of their dreams. They had worked so hard their entire lives, and they were tired. They also did everything they could for me growing up, and I wanted to be able to give back a little, even though I knew I could never repay them for everything.
I didn’t need a ton of money, just enough so we wouldn’t have to worry about it all the time. I wanted to have enough money so that I didn’t have to only grocery shop for things that were on sale. I also wanted to be able to pay our bills with a little bit left over at the end of the month.
My husband worked his butt off, and he supported me while I was chasing my dreams. He worked so hard to pay off the debt that his mom accrued while she was gambling (rest her soul). He almost lost their family’s auto body shop because instead of paying the taxes, his mom used the money to gamble.
We didn’t know about this until after she had passed away from pancreatic cancer. That was a super rough patch in our lives. Don’t get me wrong, we loved his mom with all our hearts, but she left us with a huge mess. If only we knew and we could have maybe helped her. But we can always think about the “if’s.” It doesn’t do us any good now.
My husband would often go without a paycheck after she passed, because he absolutely had to pay his employees, and he also absolutely had to pay the taxes that had accumulated over all the years of his mom doing the books for their business and not paying them. It was a crazy.
I also dreamed about donating money to good causes, such as Cystic Fibrosis (two of my nephews live with this and one of my very good friends died from it), Cancer Research, and more. But I knew that I was never going to be able to afford to donate money when I didn’t have any left after all the bills.
I would also love to be able to support my friends when they need support financially. I don’t have thousands upon thousands of friends, but the friends I do have are worth thousands upon thousands, and watching them struggle is hard. It would just be nice to be able to pay their mortgage off or help them in some way or another.
Another thing I really wanted to be able to do was send my nephews and nieces to college. My parents couldn’t afford to send my sister and I, even though they really wanted to, so I really wanted to be able to do that for my nephews and nieces so they don’t have to worry about paying tuition like I did. My husband and I also can’t have children, so if I could send my sister’s children, that’s next best.
I wanted so badly to be able to work from home, work my own hours, not have a boss, and make good money doing it. I thought this was probably too good to be true, but I would search until I found something. I also really wanted to be able to own my own business eventually, and I figured I could learn how to along the way, hopefully.
I didn’t want to be sick all the time anymore. It was so draining, and after the last major bout, I didn’t want to go through anything like that again. Being sick kept me from seeing my family and friends. It kept me from doing the things I loved to do.
I really struggled with working so hard at the school, so many hours, and not enough pay. There was no money left at the end of the month, so we had to be extra frugal. My job was killing me, literally. I couldn’t stand it anymore. After I got really sick, I decided to take a leave of absence. One day when I was on leave, I started thinking about going back to work. We really needed the money, even though it wasn’t much. But that same night I had a terrible nightmare about going back, and I took that as a sign that I really shouldn’t.
My back problems also made working as a teacher very hard. I’m a bit of a dare-devil and adrenaline junky, so I love to do things like ride dirt bikes, mountain bike technical trails, jump out of perfectly good airplanes, and so on and so forth. Anything that gets my blood pumping is F.U.N.! The only problem is, I have injured my poor body too many times. I’m pretty hard on this body of mine. In the meantime, I accumulated some doctor bills that I felt I’d be paying on for the rest of my life, unfortunately. I really wanted to be able to afford whatever I needed in order to heal my back pain, but I couldn’t afford the necessities in life, let alone something that costs a fortune, like doctors.
On the inside I was hating the fact that I couldn’t give my family what they wanted and needed. I couldn’t help them financially and I couldn’t spend time with them. I really wanted to make them all proud, too.
I wanted everyone to see that I was capable of so much more. My parents knew that I was capable, but perhaps it was I who didn’t know. I guess we are our biggest critics. So I kept criticizing myself for not being able to help everyone. That’s a really heavy load to bare.
Well, now you know some of the reasons why I needed to find something more. I needed to find something that I could help others with. I love being able to help others, so tons of money is not the reason for my drive, but instead, helping my parents, my family, my friends, and just being able to live comfortably was all I wanted. I know, it sounds like a lot now that I say it out loud, but that was my goal. That was my drive.
Watch tomorrow for the walls I hit while pursuing this dream of mine. Nothing worth having is ever easy to get, and there were plenty of difficult walls to climb over on my journey.
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