Money can still take the softness out of me in one hour

Dear Delyara, One bill, one payment, one badly timed expense, and I can feel my whole emotional climate shift. I become more careful, less generous, less playful, less able to enjoy anything simple without calculation shadowing it. I start saying no to myself before I’ve even finished wanting. I hate how quickly that happens. How fast practical pressure becomes personal contraction. Because the children don’t know the number. My husband may not know it yet. The room may look exactly the same. And still, the softness has already gone out of me.