I Thought I Grew Up Poor…

…but I didn't. Financial abuse warped my perception.

It's what my mother always told me. Sometimes I cringe at many tone-deaf statements I may have made throughout my life based upon my faulty premise of my socioeconomic level.

Things like talking about taking vacations abroad, or moving from New York City where everyone in my family owned their own house, to an affluent suburb in Connecticut, to all the years I spent at sleep-away camp, didn't jive with my preface about growing up broke.

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My mother used money to control me and I mistook that for poverty. She refused to buy me clothes from anyplace other than discount stores like Woolworth, Ames, and Zayre's because she said spending money on kids was a waste of money. For herself, she had a second bedroom for her own upscale wardrobe. 

We'd fly to a foreign country. She'd rent a condo. Hire a nanny, then disappear for days. If I wanted a souvenir, it wasn't in the budget.

I was fortunate to attend private school, but for years I went hungry because she wouldn't get food I could make for lunch, nor pay for school meals.

I had an allowance…of sorts. When I was in elementary school, I received ten dollars a week, in theory. On the weeks she remembered to give me cash, I ate lunch at school. On the weeks she didn't, I got an IOU that didn't fill the belly that growled all day.

When got to the tween stage, I got twenty dollars a week via an IOU that became a running tally sheet stuck to the fridge by a magnet. If I wanted the cash, I needed to present a compelling reason for the money. Even when she acquiesced, I had to hope that she remembered to go to the bank.

That was a high bar for a single sweater from Macy's.

By sixteen I wised up enough to request all the money she owed me to open a bank account. I squirreled away all gift money, and when I had a secret job, I added those earnings. By the summer before college, I had several thousand dollars…until my mother found out. She was buying a new house then and coincidentally came up short by a few thousand. It was my duty to give her my savings to help out the family. Since I didn't know how to say no, I went to college broke.

I got out of college and law school…even more broke. Because my mother wasn't poor enough for me to qualify for real financial aid, she took out PLUS loans. These are loans parents can get to pay for tuition and other expenses. I borrowed for half of my college expenses and she borrowed for the other. 

The PLUS loans accrued interest from day one of my freshman year. Seven years later when I finished my studies, the student loans were nearly double the amount borrowed. All that wouldn't have been my problem, except my mother dumped the responsibility to pay for the loans into my lap. She changed the address at the lender to mine and ordered me to pay. And I did…for ten years while eating macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, and generic cereal that came in a bag instead of a box.

Whenever I complained, she compared it to the $500 she'd borrowed for a single college semester. Or she told me it was my mortgage payment on my investment in myself. While I had these loans, there were a few years, she asked me to supplement her mother's income to the tune of $400 per month. I paid off her PLUS loans in full. My grandmother died and my mother kept the inheritance.

The last time she asked for money was when she wanted me to drive her and two friends up the California coast for a weeklong trip. I fronted money for all the meals and hotels, and of course gas for my SUV. She and her friends were supposed to pay me back. They…didn't. When I asked them for cash, I found out she'd told them it was a gift. After all, I didn't have any loans anymore, I could afford it.

It was only when I was in my forties that I wised up. She'd retired to Florida, purchased a house for cash, and was living on a pension and social security. Then a call came. She wanted me to fly from California to Florida in two different weeks as she got knee surgeries. She didn't care that I had a job to do or a young child to care for. 

After all, I owed it to her. 

When I refused, she hung up in a huff. The next day she called to ask me to pay for ambulance transport for both surgeries as well as a home nurse to care for her. I said no to that as well. 

In response, I received a long email about how ungrateful I was and how much I owed her. I deleted it, blocked her email, and got some more therapy. 

It was only after years of weekly counseling that I realized I could continue to say no. It was only last month when I was thinking about the loans she took out in her name that realized I could have refused to pay them. I could have even refused to hand over my savings all those years earlier. 

One of the last words my mother said to me was, "At least you never asked me for money." She was projecting and I was finally wising up to the power and autonomy that were mine. It's been ten years since I've given her any financial help. She's somehow survived. 

I've thrived.

Aime Austin is the author of the Casey Cort and Nicole Long Series of legal thrillers. She is also the host of the podcast, A Time to Thrill. When she's not writing crime fiction or interviewing brilliant creators for her podcast, she's in a yoga pose, knitting, or reading. Aime splits her time between Los Angeles and Budapest. Before turning to writing, Aime practiced family and criminal law in Cleveland, Ohio.