When is it gonna be my turn to be happy and have my money get better?

You held back with Andy and still got burned. You gave everything to others and got burned. The common denominator isn't how much you gave — it's that you keep ending up in situations where you're the one carrying everything while getting nothing back. That's not luck. That's a pattern. And the money mirroring the relationships isn't a coincidence. You've been the responsible one for four decades, and somewhere along the way "responsible" turned into "available to be drained." People — and life — will take what you let them take. The question isn't when it's your turn. The question is what you're going to stop tolerating. Because right now, holding back and giving it all produced the same result. That tells me the problem isn't your effort. It's who and what you keep choosing.

You've been the one who handles everything for forty years, and now you're looking around wondering when someone's going to handle you. That's not self-pity. That's exhaustion with a long memory. I won't tell you it's going to be okay. You already know that sentence doesn't pay bills or show up at your door with flowers. Here's what I see, and I'll be straight: it doesn't become your turn because you've earned it. It becomes your turn when you decide it is and start acting that way — not after everyone else is sorted, but right in the middle of the mess. That's terrifying when you've spent a lifetime being the one who holds it all together. But the people who lean on you won't suddenly step back and say, "You go first now." You have to take your turn while they're still leaning. Start with something small. One thing you want to do, and do it. Not as a reward for finishing everything else, because that list never ends. Do it as practice — practice letting your own happiness matter before the work is done.

Forty years of showing up and still feeling like you're coming up empty — that's not a bad attitude, that's a honest accounting. I'm not going to tell you it's going to be okay, because you've heard that enough and it hasn't made anything feel different. What I will say is this: you sound like someone who's been carrying everything — the work, the worry, the caretaking, the hope — and you're worn down to a place where "just wait" feels like a lie. That's real. You held back with Andy because somewhere in you, you knew the old pattern was dangerous, and even that didn't protect you from the same hurt. That's not failure. That's exhaustion from playing a game where the rules never favored you. You're asking when it's your turn. That question matters. You've earned the right to ask it out loud and not be patted on the head.