My family belongs to the working class, and our circumstances are fairly ordinary by local standards. As a student with no income, my parents have to pay a significant monthly expense due to my mental health condition.
Since I usually handle hospital visits and payments alone, I typically ask my parents for money when I run out to cover essential costs, leaving a little aside afterwards. Consequently, I don’t have a fixed allowance.
Recently, I used that money to purchase nearly fifteen second-hand English books for my studies and personal interest, costing approximately fifteen dollars. However, having failed to do my research beforehand, I found nearly half of them beyond my current comprehension level.
Upon discovering this, my father remarked in a gentle yet deeply ashaming tone that I shouldn’t be so lavish with money and should be more economical. He said I shouldn’t waste money on such things and would rather I spent it on food and drink.
On one hand, I felt it was reasonable to spend money on things I wanted to do. On the other, I felt deeply guilty, knowing I had no income of my own and was wasting my parents’ money.
Yet my parents had also said that they earned their money to spend it, to give the family a better life.
This left me feeling terribly conflicted. When spending money, I often felt like a complete asshole, wasting my parents’ hard work and earnings.
AITA?
NTA
15 Books for 15$ is a steal.
And the key is that they are beyond your CURRENT comprehension. You can use them to expand that comprehension.
Whenever you learn a new thing, parts of it are out of your current comprehension. That is kind of the point, isn’t it?
You would be a very mild asshole if you now just dismissed the books as “too hard”, but right now they are something to strive towards.