I don’t trust money that arrives without pain. I don’t feel relief when it comes easily. I feel tension. As if something is wrong. As if, any second now, it will turn out to be a mistake. As if someone is about to ask where it came from, or why I ever thought I was allowed to keep it.
Money That Was Never Mine
As a child, money always belonged to someone else. To adults. To rules. To commentary. I rarely had any, and when it did appear, it disappeared before I could decide what to spend it on.
The decision was never neutral. It was always evaluated. At seven years old I was told I wasted money on stupid things. I apologise for not starting to invest back then, but my seven year old brain wanted only one thing: stupid things.
Asking for money hurt more than not having it. Every request felt like a negotiation. Every answer carried the same aftertaste of shame, that familiar sense of wanting too much. “Money doesn’t grow on trees” was said more often than my needs were acknowledged.
I quickly learned not to ask anymore, because I didn’t want to feel the tension that came with refusal. Instead of money, I received things. Three coats I didn’t want. Shoes I didn’t like. Gifts instead of choice. Money as something that was never a tool, only a problem.
That was when I learned the first rule: money is not for wanting. It exists to adapt to what someone else considers reasonable. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to others.
That was the second rule, but who cares.
Realism as a Polite Form of Giving Up
In my teenage years there was even less money, but the mechanism was already fully operational. I didn’t aim high. Not because the world was cruel, but because dreams were labelled naive. Ambition was called unrealistic. Big goals were treated as something that inevitably ends in disappointment.
Realism sounded mature. Safe. Sensible.
Over time it revealed itself as nothing more than resignation in better packaging.
Being content with very little was not humility. It was a strategy. If you don’t expect more, you don’t have to experience another “no”. Money was still associated with tension, so it was safest to keep it far away from dreams.
For a girl with a vivid imagination, it felt like a quiet amputation of thought. Eventually I stopped dreaming altogether, just to avoid disappointment ever again.
Why Easy Money Triggers Disgust
Adulthood didn’t fix any of this. Quite the opposite. The older I got, the more the idea of serious money caused physical discomfort. A knot in the stomach. Resistance. Something suspended between shame and suspicion.
The internet made one thing clear: today, anyone can earn money from anything. From talking. From telling their story. From their failures, their daily life. I understood the mechanism. I saw it working. And yet inside I heard one sentence on repeat: not for you.
Don’t talk about yourself. Don’t put yourself out there. Don’t embarrass yourself.
First, pay. With blood. With tears. With years.
Only then are you allowed to receive anything.
Others could. I had to earn it.
That voice lodged itself inside me like a diode I can’t switch off. It follows me everywhere. It tells me easy money looks like a scam. Like a shortcut I’m not entitled to take. Like something that undermines the entire structure on which I built my sense of worth. Or rather, its absence.
Money That Has to Hurt
Over time I realised I only believe in money that hurts. Preferably badly. Money that demands sacrifice, endurance, suffering. When something comes too easily, it immediately loses value. As if the absence of pain invalidates the result.
Stories of creators who bought houses and cars by talking about nothing don’t convince me. Somewhere in my head, a thought always appears: they will pay for it later. If not now, then someday. If not in this life, then the next.
This isn’t work ethic. It’s an internal code. Money has to leave a mark. It has to cost something. Otherwise it isn’t “clean”. That’s why it’s so easy to sabotage your own opportunities. To stop halfway. To turn away just before something starts working. Success without suffering violates the order I grew up in.
Sometimes I think that if I had been taught a healthy relationship with money, I would be writing about easy income that doesn’t hurt.
But I’m not.
No Happy Ending
This story doesn’t have a happy ending. There’s no breakthrough moment. No sudden revelation. This state still lives inside me.
When my books were published, no one cheered. No one celebrated. At some point I decided it must be a sign that I wasn’t good enough. The royalty transfers only reinforced that belief. “You’re not trying hard enough,” whispered the voice in my head.
I turned away halfway through. I went in circles until I fell into the place I’m writing from now. Not to save anyone. To show the mechanism.
Because when easy money causes anxiety, money is not the problem. The problem is the story attached to it. A story where value must always hurt.
I don’t yet know how to leave this place.
But I know very well how people end up here.
And sometimes, that’s enough for a beginning.
