One I Would Rather Not Write

Joe Lambert, a friend of mine from the Center for Digital Storytelling, recently wrote the following in the center’s summer newsletter:
A colleague of ours on Facebook … posted a link from the New York Times interactive feature on consumer debt. Although I recently read Kevin Phillips’ Bad Money, I still failed to wrap my mind around such an exhaustively complex house-of-cards. This interactive story really allows you to get a clear picture of how insane the US addiction to debt has become….and how far this country and many of its people have sunk.

What makes this story poignant to me is I find myself pondering the costs of indulgence these days. I recently found out that like 57 million other folks in the US, I meet the classification of pre-diabetic. Put simply, my body has borrowed more (in the form of fat and sugar) than it can handle, and it is going into a kind of shock as it tries to deal with its indebtedness. I have spent the last few months attempting to adjust, which is its own journey.

Obviously, many people are trapped in the desire of enjoying a pleasure today that they can’t afford, that they hope they can pay off in the future. While I am all for hope, unfortunately hope has a cousin, denial, and I am trying to find the balance between my aspirations and my actual resources. This seems critical at this stage, for me, and for the larger political culture in the United States.

How interesting that he should put it this way. Although I’ve lost over 40 pounds since this April and my diabetes is rapidly coming under control, I’ve had to face up to another problem that I would rather not address so openly. About the time my health fell apart, my mother’s health also worsened. Our youngest son went far away from Mom’s reach to China to study and we decided to build a dream house for retirement. I lost any sense of financial balance and managed to max out one of our credit cards and drain a cash reserve account, without George’s knowledge.

I’ve always been the one who could figure anything out financially. I insisted we save, even when it seemed impossible with two small children, a house payment, graduate tuition bills, and car payments. I worked extra jobs, did consulting, and made sure I could pay for the extras without putting a strain on our cash flow.

While I am all for hope, unfortunately hope has a cousin, denial, and I am trying to find the balance between my aspirations and my actual resources. Joe’s words again, but they couldn’t be more meaningful to me now. Denial came to a crashing halt when George opened a bank statement and I had to accept responsibility for the mess I had created. Thank God for pissed-off husbands. In finally exposing the problem, a weight was lifted off my shoulders and I found a way to work through the financial problem while I also work through the health problems. Denial is no longer as appetizing as it was a few months ago.

I have female friends who say frequently, “My mother says that a woman who would tell her age (her weight, her income, her story of sexual abuse, etc.) would tell anything.” I’m telling it all, because I can’t afford the cost of hiding behind it any more.

A colleague once told me that I had my own internal gyroscope and that my sense of balance made it so easy to work with me. I want that back and it’s no farther away than taking responsibility.

My jeans have come down three sizes in the last few weeks. My blood sugar is just slightly above normal, and, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I’ll close out the month with money in the bank. It won't stay there long; it's going back in our savings.