The Great Financial Aid Meltdown of 2013

I wrote a blog the other night about the no good, very bad, terrible day that I’d had.  You’re welcome for not posting it, I re-read it this morning and the melodrama just about knocked my socks off. 

 

As much as I love the challenge of trying to do something new, the other night things got just a little too hard.  Across four (yes four) ever growing to-do lists and with time ticking down to the start of summer, the weight of going back to school was feeling a tad too heavy.  Then the University of Florida struck again and I suddenly became unwillingly intimate with the new regulations guiding student loan disbursement.  I know that to get something, you need to give something but … well, I hadn’t factored in how hard loans are to get when you’re working on your second bachelors. 

In an act indulgence that typifies exactly how charmed my life has been, I gave into the overwhelmedness (is that a word?) and took a seat on the cool kitchen floor to let myself have a good wail.  At first I thought that maybe getting it out would make it feel better, so there I was, hiccupping and wallowing in snot on a more than slightly dirty kitchen floor (sweeping isn’t at the top of the Around the House list) and asking the empty air around me when things might get even just a little bit easier.  Not a lot easier but maybe just a little bit easier once in a while.  Sitting there alone I remembered what I always seem to come upon when I let myself go to pieces like this: this act of indulgence doesn’t in fact make anything feel any better.   

The thing is, I pretty much had a default “person" for most of my life to default lean on when things got really hard. (What?  Is that not what boyfriends are for? Could, in retrospect, this dependency (reliance?) potentially account for my singleness?) And so in that moment on the kitchen floor I gave myself an ultimatum: you need to pull yourself out of this – think a goddamn happy thought. 

And what did I come up with but burritos.  Mother effing burritos was the best happy thought that I could come up with.  So I shook myself and had another go: the incredible variety of burritos available.  And guacamole. Straight up pathetic (and perhaps a little hungry) but there I was, smiling through the tears.

Admittedly the smiles were weak and ultimately I had to call in the big guns and sent a “please help” text to Club Fun who pointed out: just need to get to tomorrow, because sometimes tomorrow is when it gets just a little bit easier. 

So while I’m not there yet, I am learning to pull myself up when I’m struggling and stalled but as long there are burritos and good friends in the world it truly does feel just that little bit easier that I need.   And Club Fun was right: the next day I found my way and it felt, just that little bit easier.