Lets Talk About Debt Baby

So much of this blog has been about my romantic blunders, my longing to find meaning in life, my coming to terms with being perpetually single. But I have a dirty little secret that I haven't shared with even my closest of friends.

I am in debt.

Lots of debt. Debt that haunts me at night and makes me wonder why I even bother debt. And I wonder why, of all the things they could be teaching in school, no one taught us how to avoid debt.

I remember in grade nine guidance class spending an hour learning how to put a condom on a wooden penis. I remember each and every one of us in partners, nervously giggling as one person held the penis down while the other awkwardly rolled the slimy piece of rubber down the unrealistc wooden shaft, all of us red in the face and avoiding eye contact.

I do not remember being taught how to make a monthly budget.

I do realize that avoiding debt may not be the school systems responsibility, that household management is something your parents are meant to teach you. But, having grown up with parents so deep in debt that we lived in fear of creditors, that to this day I avoid answering phones, I was doomed from the start.

I know I really shouldn't be blaming anyone, that I brought all this on to myself. No one stuck a gun to my head and said take that trip to Seattle, buy that outfit, take that cab ride home. But society did tell me that I had to go to univerity, that I had to rack up a giant pile of student loans in order to be a functioning adult.

And so here I am, a university graduate with a degree that does nothing but impress people at parties, and a chunk of debt that I will be paying for the next twenty years.

Maybe that does make me a functioning adult. Lord knows I can never be without work, that I will forever be contributing to the tax man as I spend more hours in the workplace than I do with my own family. But maybe debt is an integral part of being a grown-up. Of all my friends, probably seventy to eighty percent of them have some kind of debt, whether it be student loans, car payments, mortgages, or even borrowing from friends and family. It seems debt has become a normal part of living in the privileged first world.

But if debt is so normal, why can't I sleep at night?

I look back at that day in class, learning how to use a condom, feeling so squirmy and uncomfortable in a room full of 14 years olds who were just as squirmy and uncomfortable as me, and I think maybe that time could have been better used.

At least condoms come with instructions.

Money comes at your own risk.

Year of the Bitch

Valentine's Day and my birthday has come and gone, and I am left feeling reflective. It’s funny, because last year I started 30 feeling a little desperate, like I’ve already hit an important mark in my life and have nothing to show for it. At 31, I feel more grounded, more in control. I don’t know if it’s because of my age- have I over night become, finally, mature?

Or is it because my approach to life in general has changed?

Last year was terrible. Last year was awful. I have never in my life been so happy to see the back of a year.

2010 was the pits.

It was the first time in three years that I didn’t get a holiday. The summer, which I had longed for all winter, flew by in a flash. I barely had a moment to stick my face in the sun. Romance was terrible. I was dumped at least three times, maybe more but I’ve chosen to block it from my memory. I gained way too much weight to feel comfortable in my own skin. One of my co-workers passed away. And I had to put my childhood cat to sleep. So when I tell people that 30 was a shit year, I really do mean it.

The worst was near the end of the year. That was my rock bottom. I had believed that it was finally my turn, that I had met “the one”. I thought that soon I would be the one posting sappy facebook statuses. But in late November that all came crashing down.

One day he decided to visit me at work, and coldly tell me that he was going to have another go with his ex-wife. He did it in the cold matter of fact way that an employer would let go an employee who was no longer valuable to the company. He did it in public. On the street. In front of passersby who clearly knew what was happening, and so politely avoided eye contact as I desperately looked for a proverbial hole in the ground to swollow me down into the depths.

That hole never appeared, and I was left standing there, a watching as he walked away, leaving me feeling as though I had been fired from a job I was not qualifed for. As though I was just not quite enough (Just before he left me alone on the street, he said “If it wasn’t her, Michelle, it would have been you.”)

For weeks I felt this ache inside. Of course it was Christmas, and in retail you can’t show any signs of depression, no notes of sadness. Everything has to be sweetness and light if you are going to make a sale. And so I kept up my customer service smile and carried on, one day at a time, even though I felt as though I was carrying a rusty bullet in my gut.

My good friend, who I confided in, gave me a bit of advice that I have heard all my life, but it had never clicked until just then:

You should never let a man make you feel like you are not enough. You should always be number one in his mind.

And I realized then that it wasn’t him making me feel like I was not enough, but it me making me feel like I was not enough. I was not number one to me.

That was my ight bulb moment, and all the weight of the world left my shoulders.

The last week of December, everything changed. I bought a new wardrobe. I cut off all my hair. I began to meditate. I began to practice my dance more regularly. I made a vow to return to the gym (which, amazingly, I’ve kept up so far!) and eat more healthily. I’m more assertive in life. I ask for what I want, always, and I no longer feel bad about doing so.

I declared 2011, my 31st year, Year of the Bitch.

And so far it’s been good. I haven’t been dating, as I still don’t feel I’m in an emotional state to do so... yet. But I have been getting more attention from men. And I’ve reconnected with a couple of the men of my past. Yet, I feel I’m seeing them from a different place, a place of no expectations, where I can be sweet with them without that pushing need to ask “What are we doing? Where is this going?” They seem to be responding to my more relaxed approach, and so are just as sweet to me. Making me feel like, yes, I am enough.

I am enough and more...

Don’t get me wrong, I still want a family. My biological clock is still blaring in my ear. But I am better able to tell it to calm down, that there is no real rush. I’m approaching everything in life that way, it seems, taking it easy. Taking a breath to enjoy what’s around me, instead of always questioning where everything is going to lead.

Maybe I won’t accomplish everything I had planned for myself at the wise age of 16. Finally, I’m beginning, just beginning, to be ok with that.

“The best-laid plans of mice and men/ oft go awry”