Read Chapter 10 “The Christmas Preparation”
New Year, New Me
10 Jan. 2019
I’m so glad that the Christmas break is over. I always find this time both: mentally and financially exhausting. I feel that Christmas has become an epicentre for consumerism and spending.
Looking at my current financial situation, I’ve started seriously wondering if we should stay in this country. The UK doesn’t seem to be family-friendly of lately, and it surely isn’t friendly towards single mother’s who want to go back to work. Childcare became unaffordable for the majority of the population regardless of your marital status.
As a single parent, I experience daily financial insecurity and anxiety related to money.
If I had kept my high profile and high paying job after having my girls, I wouldn’t have experienced financial difficulties now. I would have missed out on being a mum, but that is the price the British government asks parents to pay for wanting to be a parent.
Unfortunately, a lot of women don’t go back to full-time employment, choosing parenting instead of financial independence and stability.
Sometimes women decide to have one child after another, hoping that it could help their careers in the long run. But it’s a risky choice.
I left my full-time job to care for my children, and I shouldn’t be punished for that in the market place now.
As you can imagine, the last few months have been pretty intense on my end since my immune system was busy dealing with the emotional upheavals I caught a nasty virus over Christmas, which lasted well past the New Year’s.
My illness was a perfect excuse not to have a traditional Christmas food, and instead, we celebrated with pizza, sweets, and a lot of Netflix. While at the same time, I was fighting off a massive headache, cough and tiredness that overwhelmed my body like the monsoon rain overwhelm the lands and rivers when it finally arrives.
Our New Years celebration was also low key. It was important to me that the three of us were together, even though the girls had a couple of sleepover invitations. I was grateful that instead, they decided to stay with me.
However, I’m determined to turn my life around in 2019.
In 2019 I’m going to get as far away from perfect as I possibly can, regardless of how far that will be or will take me. I cannot waste my life’s precious energy any longer on pretending that I’m someone I’m not. (I’m not perfect and never was.)
The first step for me is to sort out my finances; financially dependent women cannot make their own, fully independent decisions.
My local library runs financial workshops for women, who want to rebuild their lives from the ashes up.
Since the financial mess Jim left me with, keeps me awake in the middle of the night, I thought that starting a year with a better understanding of finances would be a good start.
Jim still hasn’t said anything to me about business going under, but at the same time, he also didn’t say that he was going to spend Christmas holidays with his ” lady love” in the Austrian Alps.
He didn’t see the girls over the Christmas and New Year. I have a tough time understanding why he stopped caring for his kids so quickly and gave up on them without a fight. I guess this is another question in my life that will go unanswered.
To tackle my financial fears I also made appointments for next week to see my bank manager and my brother’s business lawyer (I felt so low and trapped over Christmas that I told my brother about Jim.). They hopefully will be able to shed some more light on Jim’s and my financial situation.
My only hope at this point is that Jim at least has been paying for the girls’ school.
PS. I’ve managed to lose some weight, both because I was sick and because I stopped eating crappy food and drinking tons of sugary drinks. Part of my 2019 reinvention plan is to fit in my pre-pregnancy skinny jeans. Yes, I still keep those, just in case I need to rediscover the fun-loving me I once was.