Crap. Again.

Sadly, I had a post all prepared in my head but events conspired (as they so often do) to overthrow all those planned out anythings in my life. It was all a normal, routine day (well...ish, considering I'm at my parents' house instead of home). I was down in the city running errands, going to a checkup with the orthopaedist, then on the way back wanted to swing by the old apartment since apparently the people at AU are worthless and have been forwarding all my mail there.

Mail in hand, headed to the bus stop. Waiting at the bus stop, opened the mail. According to a letter received from AES, since I dropped out of school my loan payments start March 1st 2007 instead of five years after graduation. ...WEPDIGAJPAJG?!?@!

Okay, please, help me with the logic here. Loan company refuses to give student loans, forcing student to drop out of college. Loan company then comes sharking after student to repay old loans. They're expecting me to pay with what, exactly? (Blood?) The whole reason I have to drop out in the first place is because those a-holes refused to give me any financial assistance this year and, as such, I can't afford school!!! If I can't afford it now, how am I expected to afford the loans I wasn't supposed to have to worry about until 2014???

It always happens like this. Whenever I'm starting to feel somewhat okay about things, think they're on the incline, another shitbomb falls into my lap. I say it every time: there is someone up there who refuses to see me happy. (Family, don't start. If you're going to say this is god's loving way of pulling me back by making me desperate you can think again. Since god is sovereign over events, all this is his fault in the first place and he'd better stop causing new and improved crap if he wants me to grovel.) Is my life just some sort of f-d up Dick and Jane parable about good behavior?

Over and over I hear people tell me what an enouragement I am, how they are inspired by my story and my strength to keep fighting. Well you know what? EAT ME!!! I need HELP right now, not empty words, and obviously whatever 'strength' people think I have counts for diddly squat when a person actually needs to survive.

I spend my days fighting for air from the moment I wake up, battling and kicking and screaming and demanding my right to live and have a life, and it's never enough. I get trampled, discriminated against, shoved through cracks in policy outlines, mummified in red tape, ignored when I plead for help and hounded when I have nothing left to give. I can't afford a car without working and I can't get to work without a car. I've made t'shirts and just want to give them away and talk to every girl who wants one, to get the message out, and I can't even afford postage unless I receive money. I spend hours writing letters and Christmas cards and e-mails to people I care about, even if they don't know who I am. I walk around all day looking at the world through a writerly screen, searching for things that matter and things that don't. Turning every life event, store manequin, weird commercial into a blog entry in my head, something that might make people laugh or think or feel.

At this point I don't even see the point in school. The bureaucratic torture chamber has driven me mad, I can't see how the education, no matter how beautiful, is worth it. I'll teach myself on my own as I have since grade school. I'd probably get a better education that way. But I wouldn't have a f-ing piece of paper certifying I'd done the study and graduated from the university and so I'd get automatically fed minimum wage.

Bridges are looking mighty damn better than the alternatives right now. Just when I'd finally gotten thinking that maybe I really DO want to stick around.