Numbers I can do
People I romanticise. That is the whole problem, and I keep pretending it is two separate hobbies.
Give me a rota, a wage slip, a Tesco receipt and I will tell you where the week went before the kettle has even boiled. Give me a man with a good mouth and a Friday that smells like perfume and I turn into someone who has never met a spreadsheet in her life.
I hate that. I also keep doing it.
The version of me that looks adult
At work I am the one who can add it up in my head while someone else is still squinting at the app. Maths degree. Warehouse floor. Clipboards. I know what goes out on rent day and I know what is left after travel and the bits I will not skip, like product and a decent bra, because looking unfinished makes me feel like the week has already won.
Sunday night I sit on my bed with my phone and play house with the numbers. Rent. Travel. Food. A bit aside that I call savings and then treat like a rumour. I even write the nights out down like I am going to obey them.
£40. Maybe £50 if I am being honest with myself. One decent pub, no taxi unless it is grim, meal deal lunches, no extra top I do not need.
It looks very grown. It looks like a woman who wants a promotion and a buffer and a door that is only hers one day.
Then Thursday happens.
Thursday is where the lie starts
Somebody drops a voice note. Pub. Nothing mad. Just a quick one.
I can hear myself say I am on earlies. I can hear myself say I am being good this week. Then I am in the bathroom doing my face like the spreadsheet was a joke I told to feel in control.
That is the bit people miss when they talk about being bad with money. I am not bad with money. I am bad at sitting in the quiet with a plan that does not include being wanted.
A night out is not just pints. It is the bus. It is the last-minute lip. It is the round you did not plan because you do not want to look tight. It is the chips on the way home because you forgot to eat like a person. It is the cab when your feet give up and your pride decides the night bus is a morality tale you will listen to another time.
By the time I get in, the adult column on the notes app is a relic. I know that. I still call it a one-off, which is optimistic for a woman who has had this one-off since about 2019.
Dating is where I stop being good at maths
I can split a bill in three seconds. Asking for it still makes my jaw go tight. Pride is expensive in this city. So is pretending you are fine.
Casual dates are the biggest con going. A walk is never just a walk. There is travel. There is time off the rota. There is the outfit that makes me feel like I am not turning up as the warehouse girl with Tesco receipts in her coat. There is the drink you buy because sitting there with tap water feels like announcing you are doing a risk assessment on him.
If it is good, I stay. If it is mid, I still stay longer than I should, because leaving early feels like admitting I spent money on a feeling that did not turn up.
If it is filthy and easy, I really stay. That is not an accident. Sex is the one place I do not have to add anything up. For a bit I am not the woman checking the balance like it might have changed by magic. I am chosen. I am in my body. The account can wait.
Then morning comes and the account has not waited. It sat there all night being the same number.
I romanticise people. I do not romanticise rent.
Rent is honest. It leaves on the same day every month and it does not text after.
People are where I get sloppy. A man goes a bit quiet and my brain writes a trilogy. A man is kind with his hands and I start picturing Sunday breakfast I have not been offered. A man says he is not ready and I hear a plot twist instead of a closed door.
That is why the spreadsheet looks like I have my life together and my Friday looks like a dare I already accepted.
I tell myself I want the promotion so I can stop doing this mental maths every time someone says pub. That is true. I also want the promotion because I am tired of treating nights out like evidence I might not deserve the next rung.
Well done babe does not pay for the cab. The title might.
What I actually do, when I am not lying to myself
I do not need a colour coded system that lasts four days and then dies in the bathroom. I need rules that survive a voice note.
So here is what I am trying, and I am saying trying because I have ruined nicer plans than this for a look across a room.
Cash amount for the week goes in a note on Sunday. Not a vibe. A number. If I blow it, I write what blew it. Not as punishment. As proof. Otherwise my brain files the night under chemistry and forgets the receipt.
Dates get a cap before I leave the flat. If he wants to go on after that, he can pay or we can go home. I can be filthy and still have a limit. Those are not opposites. People just like telling women they are.
Taxis are for when it is actually dodgy or I am actually done in. Not for when I want the night to feel more expensive than it was. That one hurts to admit because I have used a cab as a personality.
And if I want someone, I have to say it in a sentence that does not need a second pint to come out. Wanting a boyfriend and wanting money are the two things I keep wrapping in jokes. The jokes are getting expensive.
The bit I do not put on the spreadsheet
I am thirty. I share a flat. I watch the mirror like it owes me something. I can do the numbers. I still open the banking app like the total might have grown overnight out of sheer goodwill.
It never has.
What has grown is the gap between the woman who can run a floor and the woman who will blow Thursday for the chance that someone keeps looking at her after the lights come up.
I do not think that makes me chaotic. I think it makes me honest, late, and a bit too good at turning hunger into a night out.
Budgeting is easy when nobody is touching you. Dating is easy when you pretend the standing order is a problem for Monday.
I want both to sit in the same week without one of them making a fool of the other.
Until then I will keep being brilliant with the columns and sloppy with the people. I know which one I am better at. I also know which one I keep choosing when the voice note lands.
Adult on paper. A dare by Friday. That is the job at the minute. I am trying to get promoted out of it.
