How to Grow Up by Michelle Tea

there are always a million things to say
Holy shit—thank you!
for. I have all my limbs. I wasn’t born in a war-torn country. My house has indoor plumbing. I’m not hungover and puking right now. I’m not trapped in a small town somewhere. I’m safe. I’m not in jail. My family wasn’t murdered by the government. Not to get all grim, but the darker edge of human experience has no dropping-off point. Who knows what random maneuver of luck and fate saved me from unknowable disaster?
Holy shit—thank you!
    Some people are into affirmations—repeating high-self-esteem phrases to yourself in the mirror or leaving them jottedon Post-its stuck all over your boudoir as a reminder of how excellent you are. These, too, are sort of nondenominational prayers, prayers that you’ll wake up and realize how awesome you are. I like affirmations. Some years ago, inspired by a writer I heard talking on a panel, I began saying the Money Magnet chant. Someone had asked the writer how she supported herself, and she admitted that whenever she started feeling worried about cash she’d stop and say this affirmation/prayer/spell/wishful thought:
    I am a Money Magnet
    Money comes to me
    Money loves me
    Money is sexually attracted to me
    Money wants to be near me
    After a few chants, something would happen—her mom would send her a check; a freelance gig would come through. A writer friend from a working-poor background similar to my own scoffed when he heard this: Perhaps one needs to have check-writing parents for such affirmations to work. I decided to do my own research, adding to the end of the chant:
    I love Money
    I am Money
    Did a pile of cash land on my doorstep? Well, it did seem like opportunity knocked a little harder when I was in the MoneyMagnet groove, for sure. The sudden offers to do a paid reading or write an article kept me chanting away each day in my favorite prayer spot, the shower. Standing beneath the spray, I’d close my eyes and recite the chant. And like magic, the next day, I’d learn that a grant came through.
    Would I have gotten the grant anyway? Was the granting based on my actual application and the quality of my work, not how melodiously I intoned a few phrases in the bathroom? Probably. And, as I do make my living on the haphazard accumulation of speaking gigs and freelance writing, perhaps those shouldn’t be surprising either. But there was another, unexpected magic the Money Magic chant worked on me: It transformed my relationship to cold, hard cash.
    When a system is oppressing you, it’s easy to take the most glaring physical representation of that system and demonize it. The system itself tends to be invisible, an infinite string of transactions and reactions stretching into antiquity. As a poor person sensitive to the stings of classism, I decided early on that I hated money. Money was evil; money was the problem. I avoided financial exchanges when possible, putting on free events, doing free tarot readings, giving away my little books of poetry sometimes. When money was inevitably involved in one of my projects, I shuddered and pushed the responsibility onto someone else:
You deal with this; I
hate
money.
    Once I got sober, I lost a lot of the booze-fueled bravado that had helped me cope with the harsh realities of being poor. With alcohol, I achieved a persona of tough-assed bitch who didn’t give a shit about cash and thought you were a damn fool if youdid. Stripped of inebriants, I was just myself—smaller, more vulnerable, broke, and a bit lost. Plus, the practices I was learning in 12-step programs were about compassion—not judging people, not hating. Suddenly, I was thrust into these small rooms filled with people I used to love to rail against when drunk—men, people with more money than I had. But now we were all the same, gathered to discuss how fallible we were, how we had fucked up, how we were trying to be better