I stole thousands of dollars from family from the of 8
My parents use to argue about money growing up. Mostly because money went missing and my dad would be taking money out of my mums purse. They owned a business and my mum handled all the financials and my dad wasn’t trusted as he had a gambling problem.
With them arguing about money every 2nd or 3rd day it gave me ideas of stealing money myself especially when my mum rarely ever said yes to anything that I had wanted at the time. I was the youngest of 3, only girl. So I had somewhat felt neglected.
I was a bit of a loner in 4th grade. And I thought that having money would buy me friends. (Ironically, as an adult this turned out to be true lol)
I stole hundreds of dollars out of my mums purse, giving it away to kids at school. As a kid, it made me feel cool but now as an adult it was so stupid. Anyway, the missing money became such a big issue and caused a lot of stress in the family and my parents didn’t think it was me.
It became such a thrill that any chance I had i would be taking money out of my mums purse. I would also find chances to steal from aunty’s and uncles when I was at their house. One time I stole $600 in US currency and went to the bank at 14 to have this converted to AUD.
It caused so much stress that my dad ending up getting a stroke. He smoked and drank his stress away. So I stopped. It didn’t occur to me that stress would cause sickness. But looking back it, I caused so much drama and hurt. I think my family had an idea that it was me but I never admitted to it.
I think I stole more than $3000 AUD in total.
Not proud. But now that I am 30 I am shocked that an 8-14 year old could have any ideas of stealing this amount of money.
Deeply ashamed and Ive held onto this guilt since.