Indebtedness

There are birds warbling in the humid morning air outside my window as I manically hit the refresh button on my bank account statement. -$568.57. Somehow overnight, funds that I did not--do not--have were pulled from my account, sending me deep, deep into the negatives.

It's a day like many others, in some respects. Responsible dog owners are picking up poo, fishermen are fishing, chefs are cooking...but here I find myself flushed down the financial toilet. Surprise!

Once you hit the negatives, suddenly everything becomes an overdraft fee waiting to happen. Before you know it, you have to sell or refinance your car just to dig yourself out.

Fortunately for me, I don't think I'll be selling my car this time. There are currently funds from a traffic accident settlement being wired to my account. Somewhere between Point A and Point B lies an eternity, a no man's land of breathless immobility, one giant extended prayer for enough gas to get to work and get through until payday until the damn check lands. For some people, this place is familiar; it's no problem. Personally, I find this place excruciating.

To be in debt is to be in a sort of prison. Interest compounds as the trench deepens, and you throw money into the black hole wondering when it will ever have enough to completely go away. The universe is expanding but in the meantime, black holes make terrible neighbors.

Imagine putting a dehydrated person in a dry bathtub and handing them a bottle of water. Now, imagine telling them they could drink what was left after dumping x amount down the drain. How the thirsty person experiences this situation greatly has to do with just how severely dehydrated they are. In a country where people can and do "pull themselves up by the bootstraps," it is still incredibly easy to fail, and fail big. For a nation that prides itself on boldness and rugged individualism, there's not a lot of forgiveness for deviating from the trodden path. We are beginning to enter a conversation about this, nationally, however. Student loan forgiveness is taking center stage on this issue, but this concept raises the hackles of some who say tuition is a promise that must be kept--a contract.

I have many friends in a constant state of casual debt. They are functioning--even highly functioning--members of society, college graduates, lawyers, histotechnicians, nurses. These are people that have chosen to achieve and contribute, and they still are slogging their way through the cost of it all. Even with student loan forgiveness bubbling to the surface of political discussion, there's no clear answer for what it means for my friends who have taken legal, well-worn paths to social security. Some of my most successful friends have confided in me that they question their status because of their debt. Everything comes at a cost, but at what point is the cost too much?

As the minutes crawl by and I wait to call customer service, I can't help but feel like this is a small version of purgatory. It is a profoundly uncomfortable feeling, to owe. To be indebted.

Indebted: adj. committed or obligated to repay a monetary loan.

Committed. The roots of "indebted" reach back to the 1100s and stem from the Old French word endetter, meaning "to involve in debt." It becomes a relationship, between owe-r and owed. Can love even grow in such an atmosphere? If not, what takes its place? Numbers don't lie, so if it is an unbalanced relationship, at least it is an honest one.

The truth is, I've been in a precarious place financially for the last six months. My boyfriend and I packed up our things and moved across the country, seeking adventure and a cheaper cost of living to get on our feet. With the pandemic, everything has been a little extra uncertain, and it's taken longer than we'd like to get established. I'd love to tell you this is the first time my account has ever dipped into the negatives, but that would be a lie.

Though our finances have been murky with this great transition, we have been met with warmth and encouragement from the people we've encountered here--whether or not it was employers willing to give us an honest shot, to family brushing us off and offering us a rent-free roof. There are all kinds of ways to be indebted.

I'm not sure what customer service will do for me once I'm finally able to call. Maybe they'll remind me of some large purchase I'd pushed from my mind and gently tell me that this is the correct amount I owe. Maybe they'll sound the alarm and deliver me a shiny new card, nixing the fraudulent charge. Half a thousand dollars is an uncomfortable amount to owe when you make $12 an hour, but I've gotten out of worse financial scrapes before, even if it was by the skin of my teeth.

Millions of Americans are in debt--according to CNBC, 80% of Americans are in debt, with the average weight of said debt clocking in at $90,460 per person. Land of opportunity? Widely, yes. Home of the brave? Undoubtedly true. Land of the free? Turns out, only with forgiveness.