A more thought-out continuation

Well, I don't know how to directly link MP3s into this thing, nor can I find an actual music video for this song, but I want to put it in so...here is. It's just the song with a boring backdrop that never changes, but the point is that the song is there and in good quality (unlike most of the videos, which are cell phone video recordings of live performances).



The song is called 'Swing Life Away' and always manages to make me feel a little better. Granted, I'm still feeling quite shitty about the money situation, but despite how romanticized the song is it's still a reminder that Crystal and I aren't the only people in a really bad way who nevertheless manage to get by.

In fact, it got me thinking about pretty much all my close friends who've ever been eating disordered or major depressive or just plain crazy... One of the biggest consequences that never gets mentioned publicly is DEBT. All of us seem to be in major sort of debt. More than half have been forced to drop out of college. We've all got incredible hospital bills looming over us, nutritionists, therapists, psychiatrists, medications, ER bills and surgeries.

Continuing briefly on that last comment: yes, surgeries. I have no doubt that, in some way, my poor physical health contributed to me needing my shoulder surgery when I did. I've had joint problems for some time which I have no doubt are resultant from malnutrition taking a toll. Many other girls have nasogastric tubes to pay for, surgery to correct gastroparesis or perforated esophaguses. Surgery and eating disorders have a pretty damn high correlation from what I've seen. I mean, lets be honest.

Eating disorders don't just f-k with your head: they destroy your health. They suppress your immune system leading to a higher instance of other illnesses (i.e. chronic mononucleosis, in my case), brittle bones and osteoporosis, weakened muscular system, damaged tendons and ligaments, liver and kidney problems, tooth decay, on and on. These are all the quiet consequences no one notices until the systems start to break down, and then don't realize that they are, in fact, due to the eating disorder.

Sooo... I'm in a lot of debt. But I'm also not the only one. Maybe I just complain more, and more publicly? Who knows... Today I'm calling AES and the independent lender and working out payment plans, as well as sending off the first small check to start repaying my hospital bill.

I keep trying to remind myself that yes, I've got a lot of people to repay, but I'm only twenty years old. (Did you know that?) I may feel like I'm fifty, but in reality my parents aren't even quite that old. I've got a long time left, hopefully, and if by some freak accident I did kick the bucket then I wouldnt' have to worry about those debts anymore, anyway. Even if it took me ten years to repay these I'd be free by the time I'm thirty.

That's really not so bad in the grand scheme of things...

Right?

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.