my greatest fear

I am afraid of debt.

I don’t know debt. I know that I am lucky in that way. Credit cards are paid off to $0 each month under my home economics plan, at whatever price, and the only debt hanging over my head now is the house, on a 30 year fixed, locked-in at 5.5%.

I am terrified that divorce will push me into debt, all because I am afraid to leave this house and try to start anew in another residence. I want the impact on the children to be the least possible, and I feel that maintaining the residence, their neighborhood, friends and school is important. Plus, I don’t live in a very resell-able home; it is a 45+ year-old brick rambler with plenty of problems that, although on just under 1/3 acre, is on a lot adjacent to a cemetery. That does not bother me; I grew up across the street from a cemetery, it helps with the Halloween décor and hey, the neighbors are nice and quiet. But such a location does bother a lot of people.

Some say that filing for bankruptcy in divorce is the best thing that has ever happened to them; they can start anew, cutting old financial ties. My pride in having worked so hard in managing finances so as to keep my credit report stellar and my rating high doesn’t allow me to see this possibility as a positive. Instead, for me it would be yet another failure--I failed at marriage, I failed the hopes and expectations of so many, I failed with the finances…let’s see, what else can I add to the failure list?

I am well aware that I married for security. It was perhaps the adamant decision on his part to give everything up (income, insurance coverage, a place to live, EVERYTHING) to go and get a master’s degree in Sweden as only that institution would do. No compromise, no thinking of the fact that life was different and that sometimes plans need to change a bit once married, like I had to do. All my plans and goals had to change to fit with his, only to have my existence completely ignored once he got what he wanted.

But let’s not go there. The heart of the matter is, I realized that the “security” for which I married was not, in fact, so secure as I previously had believed it to be. I learned that this could come and go on a whim. I don’t believe that I should be 100% supported, so I have always worked. But I could not work in Sweden. It was illegal on my visa. I could have stayed back in the United States during that time, I suppose. However, we really hadn’t had a chance to be “married” since we had been married, and I felt that I needed to go with him and actually give this a try.

Long history made longer--go get some hot tea or a beverage of choice, I'll wait...

Ready?

Okay, I'll abbreviate as much as I can: 

I was finishing my master’s when I got married in May 1999. July came and my father, who had undergone a horrible 14-hour liver surgery in January of that year and was not expected to live through it, ended up in another 13-hour surgery to conduct a bile duct bypass, as scar tissue had grown so hard that it created a blockage. Fly home to help, in the middle of heavy studying for master’s exams (literally reading at least 300 pages daily--in Spanish--hence I still can’t bring myself to read much). It was the last time I saw my father alive.

One more semester of teaching, classes and my exams for the degree, with calls from Mom saying that Dad had collapsed in a pool of blood, another 911 call in the middle of the night, master’s “hazing” by the tenured of the Department that had me in tears--I was miserable. I told the chair I couldn’t continue in the PhD program (it was a combined program) and, two days after I turned in all my final work, my mom called saying Dad had slipped into a coma. And he died. And then my world went into a tailspin, I got shingles, I had to return to teach the next semester as a visiting instructor since He was still 5 months away from finishing his tour in New Orleans and then returned to Oregon. That was Year One of marriage.

Year two began, literally, with Him leaving to go back to a ship. I worked at the local university but was there mainly to help my mother get back on her feet. My marriage almost ended then; we had little to no contact and I was a mess, feeling like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and my “partner” left me alone to deal with it--not that he particularly wanted to have anything to do with my mother.

So for Christmas that year, the first anniversary of Dad’s death, we went to Hawaii, to His childhood home. With my mother. My sister was living there at my in-laws' home while finishing a residency requirement for PT, which caused even more strife between He and my family. Then we went from Hawaii directly to Sweden. In January.

Hell is not hot. Hell is cold and dark. That is what I learned in Sweden.

Classes began and I ceased to exist. He would literally return to the single-bed efficiency apartment (yes, I slept on the floor, in the entranceway, in the bathroom or in the study lounge) and, as the computer was at such an angle, he sat down upon returning and, back turned to me, stayed like that until 2 or 3 a.m., taking a break for the dinner I would prepare. Sex was the obligatory lay--let him do what he needed to do then he was back on the computer, back turned to me, default position.

So I left that room.  I tried to leave that life, but I didn't try hard enough.

I should have left before I got pregnant, but I didn’t.

I should have left when he threw a yelling fit at my mother and my sister in the middle of the street in Copenhagen, but I didn’t.

I should have left when he threw the table at me, but I didn’t.

My sense of security was destroyed and I was with a man who had no clue, nor seemed to want to get a clue. And I started to wake up.

Perhaps I have been in debt, truly, for the past ten years. I just never banked on it being this kind of debt.