There is a concrete plan for acquiring my own place now. I am no longer as afraid as I was yesterday because it seems do-able, less huge and closer to possible/probable than anything I have pondered.
My former husband and his wife closed on their house yesterday and are moving this weekend. She is ecstatic because she will have a bathtub, finally, and a bathroom to call all her own. We women seem to be so easily pleased (“seem” being the operative word there). He approached me last night with some ideas that took my breath away. I was surprised to witness the intensity in which all my old patterns flew to the surface and fought for the right to overrule. Here are some of the things I noticed in myself:
He is trying to get something over me. This is a trap of some sort.
I can’t do this. I’m not ever going to be able to do this.
How come everyone else gets to have their dream houses and I get to settle for a petite guest room in my father’s house?
I don’t understand what he is saying. I don’t understand money. I never understand money. I’m never going to understand money.
OMG!
ENOUGH ALREADY, ANGIE!!!!
It was when I thought that that I broke through. I started doing reflective listening… “Okay, so let me see if I understand what you are saying. You are going to upgrade the upstairs of the house and put it on the market then. At that point, you will offer it to me to purchase at cost to get your investment partner bought out. I will qualify for the original loan on the house as it is, which will get my feet, at least, into the housing market. You are willing to forfeit your equity to keep the loan affordable for me. Then, I will be in a house in about 60-90 days that is completed upstairs and unfinished downstairs.”
Once I started actually participating in the conversation, talking with him instead of staring straight ahead like a deer caught in headlights and absorbing absolutely nothing, I actually understood what the hell he was talking about. Once I became willing to think that, perhaps, I could just – maybe – understand all this money talk, I actually did start to understand all this money talk. Once I started breathing and moving and being open to the possibility that what he was presenting me was actually a step in the right direction for me, rather than an opportunity for him to kick my ass, I actually began to see that it is a step in the right direction.
For the seventeen years that I have known this man, he has always, WITHOUT FAIL, done everything in his power to make things right financially for me. He has always gone above and beyond to make sure I am taken care of. Even now that we are divorced (and have been for ten years) he is still willing to do that. He has always done right by me financially. He may have left me wanting in other realms, but I have never second-guessed him when it comes to money.
When I reminded myself of that, it changed the way I was listening.
I am continually surprised by how my fear, and old programs around fear, get in the way of my progress. It is difficult to get forward movement when your feet are hobbled with chains of what once was – or never was – or was perceived to be.
I have had an amazing life! And, truly, this fear thing stumps me because I have never really had any reason to fear. It just seems that I just DO fear. Even in the worst times of my marriage, when I was bruised and broken – physically and emotionally – I knew down to the very depths of who I am that I was safe. In the weirdest way, I have always known I am safe….
Hmmmmm… I have always known I am safe… WOW! I had no idea!
I love this blogging thing. Thanks for listening.
And now, I am excited! I am on my way to a place of my own!!!
