Calling it what it is

I’ve been looking at Real Estate Porn quite a lot lately. I guess I like to torture myself... After the Great Financial Debacle, I don’t think anyone legitimate is going to approve me for a mortgage until 2012, so I realize it is what passes for entertainment. I miss my garden deeply, so much that I don’t think about it too much, but I believe there is only a townhouse in my future. The responsibility of my house used to give me strange, disturbing nightmares. My “money problems” weighed me down for years. I don’t want to revisit that.

I don’t burden M with details or want her to wrestle with stuff she won’t understand, but I also believe in being honest with her. So it kind of cracks me up when I hear her say that I had “money problems.” Part of me cringes and wants to deny it and call it something else. But (fortunately) the healthy stronger parts of me are grateful that I don’t have any secrets and that part of my past is behind me, and besides... I DID! Having that out in the open makes it lose its teeth.

She also asked me why I wasn’t married. That to me could open a can of worms that she isn’t old enough to handle, so I just say that I didn’t want to. The great thing about her age is that “I didn’t want to” sounds perfectly reasonable to her, and the conversation moves on to something else. That, too, is the truth, but it isn’t quite that simple. But I don’t have to deal with that right now, thank goodness.