I was getting a bit worried because I couldn’t immediately pin-point events/memories related to specific ages, or able to have a general remembrance of what happened within year 0 to 1 and 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 and 3 to 4 and so on – it was all just one big ‘blank space’, with here and there some memories of pictures coming up (like remembering actual photographs that my parents have in their photo albums) that could tell me ‘how I looked like’ – but I could not infer from those memories as pictures what actually ‘happened’ in those years / timelines.
So it’s a bit strange that I know that those 7 years happened, but in my mind as memory, there seems to be no direct ‘evidence’ of this, as if someone hacked into my data drives and wiped my memory lol.
Then after looking at it some more, whether really not ‘anything’ would come up – two memories surfaced and opened up. I wasn’t able to say what age or around what time these memories took place, but I’m pretty sure I was seven or younger.
Both these memories revolved around some type of conflict experience between myself and my parents, where I did something for myself which in their eyes was ‘wrong’ and now I had to be punished/taught a lesson.
What stood out for me in both these memories, was that it wasn’t per se about me getting a ‘Lesson in Morals ’, as much as it was about how Money determined my parents’ perception and thus their experience, which then in turn also obviously had an effect on / determined their relationship with me and my development as a human being.
In the first memory I had taken money from my parents while we were on holiday. We were staying at this type of resort place / park where you have lots of little cottages together and restaurant type buildings and space for kids to play. So it was a very ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ place for kids to wander around by themselves, because it’s a protected environment. They had a little shop there, like a souvenir shop of some kind, which had the most BEAUTIFUL candles I had ever seen, they were simply MAGNIFICENT and I just had to have one, how could I not have one, I mean it was just like ‘woah’. My parents weren’t very interested in the candles and just wanted to get some cheap postcards so send to friends and family to show off how much ‘fun’ we were having at this beautiful holiday place. I knew my parents weren’t going to buy it or let me buy it because they’d always been full of shit when it came down to money and me wanting things, where they would never buy me anything no matter how long I begged (and I could beg, on my knees, in the shop) – unless it had some form of ‘educational’ purpose.
So, knowing that I wasn’t going to get it through the manipulative way of begging and whining, I went for a more direct approach. One day when things were nice and quiet in the cottage, I took money from my parents and walked to the little shop. I didn’t have much information about money at that stage, in terms of ‘what is expensive’ and ‘what is not expensive’ and those things. All I knew is that things have a price tag which has a number on it, and if you have pieces of paper with numbers on it that add up to the number on the price tag = you can get it.
So I took the money (which was back then also in a different currency so I really had no clue if I had taken a lot or not) and ventured to the shop to buy myself a candle. They had these really awesome and nice candles in the shape of horses, but my money numbers didn’t add up to the number on the price tag. So then I looked at other things which were nice for which I did have enough numbers, and ended up picking this beautiful flower candle, where the petals were like flowing like a waterfall from the center of the flower with the candle wick standing up from the center. It was also pretty huge (to me), as I was mostly used to those little ‘ tea lights’. And I mean, the ‘freedom’ I experienced of being able to grab the candle, take it to the counter, give the cashier the money, and walk out with the candle – it was like woah, amazing! And so simplistic at the same time.
My parents found the candle pretty quick. It was a fragile thing so I couldn’t just ‘hide it anywhere’ and being in a small cottage with 5 people, there was not much space to hide it.
Turned out it was ‘outrageously expensive’, and what I had done was a ‘big deal’. Then at some point, I think because my mother could see my father getting enraged, she said that I must have bought it for them as a gift – and that because I don’t have my own money, I had to take it from them and then would ‘give it back’ in the form of the candle. So she gave it like an ‘innocent’ and ‘sweet’ twist/turn to the story and I went with it because it seemed to calm my dad down. My mom really liked the candle as well though, I remember my dad saying that we should go back to the shop to get a refund and where I could see my mom grab on tighter to the candle and come up with some freaking excuse as to why it was better if she just kept it. I’m pretty sure that candle is still in her bedroom to this day, and never used so it could maintain its magnificence lol.
Then in the second memory I wanted to have a nice calendar like the ones you see in stationary shops – but we never bought anything from those type of shops because it was ‘out of our league’. So then I went, okay, what are my options? So I went and designed my own calendar on a then prehistoric version of Microsoft Word, where you could pick your design and then add the images you want for that month. So I looked for the coolest Britney Spears desktop/wallpaper images and compiled myself an awesome Britney calendar which I printed out. Again – my parents found out, and were angry. I was confused, because I didn’t take any money and I didn’t buy a calendar behind their backs – what’s the problem this time?! It was the ink… I used a lot of ink with printing the calendar/images and ink is very expensive and now they are going to have to buy more ink, why do I keep screwing them over like this, etc., etc. So then I pulled the whole ‘but I am so innocent, I did it for someone else, I am just trying to be nice / good girl’ twist, where I told my parents that I had done it for a boy’s birthday present (he did have his birthday soon and he loved Britney). So this again helped to ‘soften the blow’ but I was getting the picture that whatever I do basically costs money and can be problematic. Again I ended up not getting what I wanted as I gave the calendar away to the boy to ‘get with the story’.
At first glance, both these memories seem to be about my relationship dynamic with my parents, where I do things that are ‘wrong’ and need to some ‘sorting out’. But in the end, what it is really about is money. Money determined my parents experience in every moment, and within doing so it determined the very nature/essence of the relationship we had, and consequently would determine who I would become within myself in how I coped with such relationships and information.
So even when we are looking at unraveling the mysteries of ourselves and our ‘psychology’ – the line ‘Follow the Money’ to get answers is just as applicable. Follow the money, investigate the money dimension within your Life and you’ll find out how come you are who you are today.
So within my next blogs I want to use this angle to dig into memories from between 0 and 7 years old, and obviously to also work on the memories I have written out here today.
