It was never really about the cheese.
Quincey Ankrett- Commercial Bid writer and Fundraiser
Sat on the bed in the scorching Cyprus heat, opposite my frankly bewildered husband, I final manage to get my words out through bouts of gut wrenching, heartfelt sobbing, ‘It’s not about the cheese, or the lack of money – it’s about not being me.’
Rewind 45 minutes and we are in the throes of a full-blown row. To the casual observer it’s a row about cheese which includes my shouting, ‘I shouldn’t have to explain to you why I need 20 euros for cheese – I’m obviously not just buying cheese am I?!’
Rewind a further 45 minutes and I had remembered I was making spaghetti bolognese for dinner, but we are out of bloody cheese. I pick up my purse and walk to the door – as I walk, I look down and stop in my tracks. I have no cash and my bank account has £1.42 left in it and its then I realize – I have no independence left at all. Before our wedding I had resigned from my job in London and tried to prepare, as best I could, to become unemployed (for the first time since my first 6 months as a student) as I followed my infantryman husband abroad. Every penny which hadn’t been spent on the wedding was saved in my account as a ‘nest egg’, I had prepared an excellent CV and researched the employment market I was entering.
Almost a year later my money had run out, my self esteem was at rock bottom and my sense of personal ‘worth’ was gone. And this is where the cheese came in. You see I was angry – really, really angry. I hadn’t lived at home since I 17, I’d funded my way through university, paid my own rent and spent my own money. On what I wanted, when I wanted. And now, here I was-unemployed, with no savings, in a foreign country with no means to even buy a block of bloody cheese without asking my husband for funds. I had never, and have never, felt so angry, trapped, frustrated and to be honest ashamed as I did that day.
As I sat there on the bed, I tried to explain just how hard the last year had been and the toll it had taken. You see it wasn’t just the money – it was the boredom both physically and intellectually. It wasn’t so much that all I had to do was homemaking, though that was never really how I wanted to spend my life, it was the reply to ‘how was your day’ that I struggled with. ‘How was your day?’ is, according to Kate Fox (Watching the English), the English person’s polite way of asking, ‘What have you actually achieved today?’ and this was the problem. I listened as my husband recounted tales of troubleshooting, disorganization and workplace drama and my heart sank knowing my reply would be largely the same as yesterday and equally mundane. Realistically I had affected little change that year and achieved even less. After pouring my pained heart out, my husband replied with, ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea it was this bad – do you want to go home?’ Several years later he would admit to holding his breath as he waited for the answer knowing that a separation of 2 years, married unaccompanied, could well ‘kills us’ as it had done so many couples in the past.
Luckily, I remained, and we talked ‘coping mechanisms’ together – as a couple. We got a dog, a huge help to my mental health as I now had someone to ‘look after’. For a while I stopped looking for work and instead volunteered (at the primary school and local animal shelter) . When I did I apply for work again, I got the first job I interviewed for – perhaps the ‘stench’ of desperation had left me? Or the glow of happy resilience had returned to my cheeks? What took me a long time to realize was that it wasn’t really work I was looking for (though the money helped) it was the sense of purpose and the fulfilment of goals which employment brings. This is ultimately the reason I joined e50K. I saw the potential of e50K to provide this to so many military spouses just like me.
