I don't think this is going to help. I think I've done about as good as I can do to mitigate my problem. I would love to not stay stuck in an anxiety spiral for the next several weeks. The immediacy of my feelings part of me is already bored and annoyed-enough with them, but I can't seem to dismiss them entirely. This still feels like the ambiguous beginning of what might be the meaningful steps that get me out of debt.
I hate debt. I hate it so much. Out of extreme luck I never had to take on school debt, and that's if you don't ask my dad who almost died and had to fight for years to get the settlement money that paid for college. My former best friend and I calculated to the penny what either of us owed in fast food buys. I didn't apply for a credit card until my 30s. The first time I borrowed around $2,000 to pay off my shed-now-house, I worked 18-20 hour days delivering food, donated plasma, and ate the cheapest ways I could to pay it back in 3 weeks.
I've only gone into debt because I've believed in myself, the people around me, and what I could accomplish. I've anchored to the fact that I've never gone in debt an amount higher than what's been stolen from me. Both my uncles, and my former friend, account for that. I've hired people who have stolen from me. Others who have, functionally, stolen from me in their unreliability and perhaps outright lies about what they could accomplish in grant-writing and fundraising. At a certain point while working two jobs, both stole wages from me.
This is the context. I didn't get myself in trouble because I don't know math or refuse to keep a budget. I love excel sheets and formulas showing me what is or isn't reasonable with theoretical conditions. I didn't blow money on hookers and cocaine. I don't owe for gambling. I don't drive a car I can't afford nor live in a house with obscene rent or mortgage payments that no psychology major delivery boy should ever expect to afford. I'm not behind or avoiding paying for children I don't have, or a divorce. I'm just an average poor-enough person who's managed to sneak in a few nice things over the years.
I'm up against, what I'm told, is a county trustee who likes to go out of her way to make Chapter 7 filings contentious. In a worst case scenario, I'm backed into a corner of filing Chapter 13 instead, which fundamentally protects my shit, but drags out the payment process over 3 to 5 years. I already thought I had a solid consistent payment with a debt consolidation company, and that proved to be untrue. It's why I'm in this bankruptcy exploration altogether. It's a doable, manageable, failsafe and fallback position. But it doesn't correct for the fundamental antagonizing psychological condition.
I deeply resent that I owe anyone for anything. I don't live in a catastrophically exuberant and excessive way. I've never tried to delude myself about what I can or can't afford. This isn't chickens coming home to roost. This isn't karmic justice for some Ponzi scheme. This is the latest step in a series of humiliating conversations I've had to engage in with the people closest to me that have supported me financially over the years. I have irons in the fire for paying them back, and in relatively short order, but I maintain that neither them, nor I, should have ever been put in this position in the first place.
And that indignity is at the core of what nags me even if I get a "solution" through the longer-form bankruptcy. I won't be "free" to "just be broke" and go back to navigating my few hundred to a thousand dollars a month at a time. I'll be on the hook every month for the next 3 to 5 years, and punished if I try to pay it sooner. I'll be at the mercy of the legacy of betrayal. I'll be there until I can find a soothing enough coping story about why it's small potatoes in the face of the world otherwise burning down or atrocity next door. I'll be there because a small-town trustee gets her rocks off adding insult to injury like so many that have been emboldened in our fascist era. It feels like I'm begging the universe to just let me get back to zero.
In a best case scenario, all of the information I've dug up for the filing, and the evaluation I got from a realtor, will just allow things to proceed without a fight or delay, and in 3 months, I'm still broke, but free. There's a small chance I don't psych myself out and get screened away from a drug study that's supposed to start the first week of February. In a magic land of hope and possibility, I get a clean filing, admitted to the study, and every couple weeks I'm getting $1,000 for each outpatient visit which I can use to pay back my dad and past investments from friends, as well as get back ahead on normal house bills. I might even get my water running again.
Then, months from now, I get to read this blog as just another piece of spot-panic that would have benefited immensely from hindsight it's impossible to manifest any sooner. Then, this is one more gripe in the infinite series of injustices I no-less navigate one way or another regardless of the anticipated pain or suffering. I want to be the kind of person that already knows this. I want to be at peace now, not when the questions get answered. The fundamental question remains. Why can't I just be cool, now? I already know everything. Didn't you see me type it all up without notes or study? Can't you pick a crisis from my previous 1,242 entries I survived or forgot about? Fucking learn your lesson already you neurotic dick head. You don't have real problems, and no one fucking cares. You don't have to either.
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