My Money Story Part 2

I’m overused. You swipe me all over town. I’m worn. You stretch me thin, like I’m going to either provide you your last meal for a few weeks, or as a sacrifice for the next best thing. I give what I can. I want only to help, never to hurt. I strive to make you happy, to instill a sense of relief deep in your soul. But I think I’m only capable of providing a rush of excitement, a rush of security, a slight, definitive momentum.

You’re always thinking of me. I have the capacity to make or break your emotions; to send you to extremes. I don’t have the luxury of human emotion. I don’t feel. Yet, I have an incredible power over you. A power that controls your emotion, that causes rash decision making or intense withdraw. I’m plastic, I’m paper, I’m metal. I own a large piece of your humanity.

I threaten you. Sometimes I’m there, sometimes I’m not. You can add to my existence and you can take from it, but I always remain the same. In a strange way, you do not. You fluctuate in your feelings towards me. You sometimes hate me, you sometimes praise me. I can give you things the world cannot. I can take things you wish I wouldn’t. Nevertheless, I am still inhuman, and you would give so much for so little of me.

You work for my validation to come through the “approved” notification at a cash register. Then you put me away until you need my validation once more. You use me. You take me for granted. You give me away, you waste me. You allow me to control the way you live all aspects of your life, yet you treat me with inhumane disrespect. I am nothing more than plastic; than paper; than metal.

Where do you draw the line? When do you no longer use me? Why do you seek my approval? Why do you allow me the control over your being? Imagine if I did not exist. Imagine if you had more or less of me. Would you be better off? Would you be emotionally more content? Would you stop worrying about what you can and cannot have? Sometimes I wonder what life would be without me.

Though I can control the range of your emotions, and though your life would be better without knowledge of my existence, I have gotten you to where you are. Though I am made of materials that are simply disposable, I have helped cure your mother from cancer, broken your family from bankruptcy, given your father the tools to live a better life, provided you an education, and all the essentials you need.

And yet you overuse me. You use me too much or too little, and you are never content. Your faith doesn’t apply to my being. You never give back enough to feel secure.

You’re relentless.