RE: The Letter I'm Trying to Compose to My Parents About Bankruptcy

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XxzN6NGmaSM&feature=related (go here)

I know I didn’t write anything on the blog yesterday but I had very good reason. I’m currently in the throws of an existential crisis or crushing under the weight of having lived a good life while in college and post college and now trying to pay for it.

You ever notice how they offer you free t-shirts and that seems to be all you need to sign up for every credit card under the sun and then they send it to you and that seems to be all you need to spend money.

I can actually recall the first time I used my credit card, ever, it was at Target and seems to have set up what would become the downfall of my character. Target, not even a good store. I didn’t spend 500.00 on a pair of shoes, or 800.00 on a handbag. I didn’t buy anything of substance. I went to Target and I think I bought a waste basket, some random clothes, some food, some DVDs and CDs and called it a day.

I sometimes wish that I could get statements from the very first year I had my credit card so I could see the length of ridiculousness I went to to buy crap that didn’t’ matter and now I use my credit card to pay for things like electricity, and the internet (which is a tax write off for husband so it’s not like I’m just paying for it for now reason).

The point of the story is I’m currently in the middle of an email correspondence with BFF Lo about how hard it is to be carrying the weight of a debt so much bigger then you are willing to acknowledge on your shoulders and wondering if you somehow I have no where else to go but to the dreaded Bankruptcy Land (where everybody knows your name and thinks your name is a ridiculous investment).

It is somehow harder to admit to my parents that I am financially retarded then it would be to admit to my parents that I’m a murderer. I think that they would probably understand me being a murderer, they would probably assume that there was some really good reason that I had to murder who I murdered and they would “wait to see what they said at trial.” But financial retardedness is almost inexcusable and in a way I think that they would blame themselves and not just blame me for not teaching me responsibility with money (and raising me as a spoiled brat, who ended up in debt).

They were poor people… they KNOW the value of money. THEY KNOW how easy it is not to have any. And they raised me (and their other children) without a care in the world, we always had enough (did we? I don't know, I wasn't privy to that) and we always got what we wanted.

You know when you hit rock bottom, that’s the part of the after school special where the parent finally decides not to bail their kid out of whatever situation they are in and the kid has to get out by themselves, maybeI don’t see the point in telling them in knowing that this is my burden to bear and not theirs but I also know that they wouldn’t want me to keep it a secret, they wouldn’t want me to go through it alone.

*pause*