release resentment about my debt

I miss it because it was the last link to my husband and he may have been insane, unreliable and dangerous to my health, but I loved him. I’ve cried about this three times. There’s a letdown. I guess part of me was expecting an expanded sense of freedom and well-being. It turns out that the freedom is a little scary. All options open? YIKES!!I’m sitting with it. I’m forcing myself to tell people because I know I need to acknowledge myself for this. When I told my artist colleagues this Saturday, I sobbed.

Part of my homework this week in the Radical Reinvention class is to be wrong. Wrong about all my core beliefs. We spend all this time convinced we’re right and how happy does that make us? So for one week only, I’m going to be wrong about everything and see what happens.

For example, I thought that debt was holding me back from getting trained as a coach, since I don’t have money for tuition, airfare and lodging. WRONG! The debt – and my job, which I’ve also been blaming – are the reason I signed up for the RR class in the first place! I bet if I didn’t have the debt, I would spend my time and money distracting myself with clothes and travel and books and music. Without this constant reminder that I need to radically reinvent my life, I wouldn’t be saving up for a Shadow Process Retreat, a requirement for those who want to train as coaches.

The debt is a catalyst to change my life. I’d like to type that I no longer need it. In fact, I did start to type that and then erased it. I was wrong about that, too! I think I DO still need it. I need it to keep me on the straight and narrow, focussed on finding a way to get trained and start a coaching practice. Otherwise, I might stray onto an easy, shiny side road. I may be able to release it once I’m further along this path, but right now it’s training wheels for my new commitment to reinventing my career.

And the best part is that no one can tell me I’m wrong, because I already know I am. Ha! I’m digging being wrong.

During a recent class, the coach asked a participant who filled her days with distractions to avoid her fear of boredom, “What if you just sat with your boredom? What if you loved your boredom? What might that free up for you?”

What if I loved my debt? What might that free up for me?

What if I loved it for what it is now without holding on to it for security or using it to define me? If I look at it as the tuition I’m paying for a master’s class in taking responsibility for my own financial and emotional health, I might be less likely to let these years slip away without moving toward a life I adore. If I went back to school to finish a degree, I would be willing to live in an undesirable area if I thought what I learned would benefit me long-term. Can I approach debt that way? Can I love it as a choice that demonstrates that I am ethical, responsible and capable?

Loving it that way would free up a lot of energy I currently spent on resentment and fear. If I changed my name for the debt to Tuition for Master’s Class in Owning Consequences, I might love it. Especially if I made sure that I graduate into a life that energizes me and don’t repeat the choices that led me here. I could also be getting a minor in Loving Wherever I Live, a useful skill for a restless soul like me.

Good questions and honest answers make all the difference.

If it wasn’t for the debt, I would have been OUTTA HERE and then Mr. Man and I never would have moved beyond friends into sweethearts. I might have moved very soon after my husband died, so I doubt I would have attempted to write a novel in November 2006. If I hadn’t written that novel, I wouldn’t be writing this one. Now I’m in my own place, writing a novel and have a great boyfriend whom I love dearly.

Again. Another month where I fall short. This month it’s buying copies of Mr. Man’s CDs and having to restock on some household basics and medical expenses and spending a whopping $10 on a costume for a party and paying off my entire hospital debt. I’m going to put just 1/3 of my usual monthly amount in my buffer fund and I’m still not sure I’ll make it. I am beyond sick of this.

I don’t want to reframe. I don’t want to learn something from this. I don’t want to remind myself that I chose this pace of repaying debt and the correspondingly tight budget. I don’t want to remember that I’m living here because the cost of living is cheap and I have a lovely boyfriend here. I want to rage and sob and pound my fist on the desk and throw crockery.

Instead, I write this entry. I try to breathe deeply. I think of the extra $100 a month that will ease things now that I’ve paid off the hospital debt. I console myself with the fact that I’ve almost earned another $25 Amazon gift cert by using my credit card for work expenses. I wonder at the fact that I still have such positive memories of my husband and affection for him after he created such financial chaos in our lives. I ignore my car’s age, my battered work clothes, my upcoming trip to CA to see my family. I try to believe there’s a lesson here, one I haven’t learned yet if I still feel this teary despair and sense of injustice. I try. I really try.

Today, I don’t succeed.

Here’s what has me resentful today. I want to buy a DVD series of 24 lectures on calculus. Each lecture is 30 minutes. It’s reasonably priced but my budget is so tight that if I do this, I can’t do much of anything else next month. Also, the bookkeeping software that I’d like to learn is $200-$400. I don’t mind so much giving up a lot of frivolous stuff but this is actually learning new skills and exercising my mind and it really pisses me off that a lot of the reason that I’m in debt is because we paid off my husband’s student loans in like six months so he wouldn’t go to jail (long story).

I’m so sick of being here again and again. If I liked living here more, I would pay off the debt slowly and budget in more luxuries. But as it is, three more years seems like a long time. I know it makes sense to stay here, pay off the debt in two years, save for a year and be in a much better position to move somewhere I enjoy without getting back into debt. I know it intellectually, but then I want to go somewhere on Sunday or after 10pm on a weekday and everything’s closed and I want to get out NOW. Ugh. I wonder if I could come up with 24 monthly goals that could only be done in this region? That might help. But I’ve got enough goals. Maybe a list of things that I like about living here would be a good exercise. I’ll ask for Mr. Man’s help. After all, he’s first on the list!

I really do. I want to buy new clothes. I don’t need them but oh how I want them. Dresses, especially, and new lingerie. I could do this if I slow down on building a buffer fund or paying off debt. How to choose? The thought of being in debt even one day longer than necessary is suffocating. The thought of not having money saved against the day that my 18 year old car gives out is frightening. The thought of waiting two years and four months to be able to feed my hunger for sensually satisfying fabrics and styles is maddening. Things should ease in October or November but right now even that feels, as my younger self would say, forever away.

Okay. Reframe. In October or November (need to check when the hospital debt will be paid off), I will need that extra $103 for my trip to California. But starting in December, I can use it for clothes. In the meantime, I can wear some of my formal clothes around the house and out. I have a lovely ivory silk suit. I have two dresses and one pair of trousers that need to be altered/repaired. That shouldn’t cost too much.

It amazes me how I can swing from appreciative contentment to resentful avarice in a matter of hours. I think it was the frustration of a two hour training on a very slow computer with an instructor whose thick accent made her difficult to understand that turned my mood. So it’s probably not about the debt at all. It’s about trying to cram too much info into my brain too fast under circumstances that made it difficult to learn.

Though I really do want some new clothes. Sigh.

Yep, I’m back there today. After some hefty bills, it’s going to be a very lean July and August. For the most part, I’m okay with that. It feels better to pay down the debt and build the buffer fund than it does to go out and have a beer with friends. It’s mostly missing shows that I resent. My friend’s band is having their CD release party this weekend. I feel like a cad for skipping it. Then there’s the dinner with Mr. Man’s family. I forgot to ask if he can pay for it. If not, what do I do? I don’t want to back out now. And Mr. Man’s sister’s birthday party. I feel that I should get her something. Need to talk to him about that, too. He’s probably forgotten to get her anything, knowing his disorganized brain. Maybe we can give her a joint gift and I can pay him back.

I hate having to figure and scrimp. I know it’s a choice. I could pay less on the credit card or build my buffer more slowly. But with an 18 year old car and a few health problems, the buffer seems important and slowing down on debt repayment means feeling this constricted resentment that much longer. I know that the people I see wasting their money on shiny toys and going out, getting into debt and living on the edge have a lot of money stress that I’ve (pretty much) eliminated from my life. That doesn’t always help when I’m nursing my one cranberry juice at the bar and missing a show that I’d really like to see or not replacing my worn out work clothes and shoes.

Sometimes I still think, “Damn it, the dead guy owes me!” I think about his promise to start paying me $300 a month in April 2005 until he’d paid off his debt to me. He did transfer some of the debt that he’d rung up to his credit card. He died before I found out about the five figure tax bill. That would have been a fun discussion. In his suicide note he said that he didn’t think I would be able to forgive him, partially because he was leaving me in such a financial mess. Then he said that it wouldn’t have gotten any cleaner if he’d stayed alive. His own financial situation was one of the reasons he listed for leaving life. So I’d probably be in the same place even if he had lived a while longer. But, but, but…my mind spews out possible scenarios. Even a few hundred dollars here and there when he could. Pointless dreaming. He was headed toward death for the last few years that we were married, though he promised me he wouldn’t kill himself.

Part of my resentment about this damn debt is that it reminds me of the worst of him and of us. I want to be able to remember just the good times and the beautiful, brilliant, loving side of him. That’s usually the perogative of those left behind. Having the evidence of his lies and betrayal mailed to me as a bill every month makes it hard to release resentment. Damn hard. I just want to love the boy I shared my life with and shed, finally, the terrified, manipulative, mentally ill and delusional alcoholic criminal he became.

Today the debt feels like a bit of a lifesaver. If I wasn’t so determined to pay it off quickly, I think I’d be looking to move somewhere, anywhere, out of HERE right away. My restlessness has returned, as well as some self-destructive urges that I am so far resisting. There’s something bubbling up from my heart and mind that I need to observe and feel. I don’t want to; I’d much rather distract myself or bolt. Whatever it is, it isn’t pleasant. More grief over my husband? (Is it endless?!) More frustration over my work situation? More dissatisfaction with myself spiritually and emotionally? More guilt over loving Mr. Man when I don’t want to live here long-term? (Still need to discuss that with him.)

Whatever it is that I need to face, without the “burden” of debt, I think I’d completely rework my life just to avoid it. So, reluctantly, thank you, Debt.

Lately I’ve been thinking that if I didn’t have the debt, I’d save up six months of living expenses and move to San Francisco. This city grates on my nerves sometimes. People are so regionally minded that they become a little too self-satisfied for my taste, turning inward to admire their comfortable little communities. I’m afraid that by the time I’m financially set to move, I will have become equally complacent. Without the debt, I could save money rapidly. Once again it feels like a chain around my neck.