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so today i got an or-your-firstborn-child letter. sallie mae. they own the rights to half my student loan debt -- about $94k. of course, after the 30-yr payout, it's going to be about a trillion dollars, but let's focus on the monthly payment, which is still enough to take your breath away. $444. and that, let me repeat, is just HALF of my overall student loan indebtedness. so at a level payment plan, we're tlaking about a thou a month until i'm 60.
let me just say how frustrating it is that my peers are buying homes, planning weddings and babies, saving for retirement, and i feel like i'm 'starting out' so deep in the hole that i can't see the fucking light. so i cried my ass off for about an hour. and now i'm capitulating. what does that mean? it means looking for jobs in places i don't want to live, jobs that will suck my personality out of my face and spit it into the corporate sperm that shoots all over this sad, exploited country. any employment that looks fulfilling to me pays less than $30k/yr -- which is a fine amount if i didn't have ginormously huge, muscule-bound goon loans thumping their fists on the table.
and before you get all stressed and tell me i *chose* to take out those loans and am now responsible for them and i should stop bitching and sell the fuck out already, let me remind you also that there are americans dying in iraq who *chose* to join rotc, et al, in order to go to college. and there is a certain segment of this country's population who didn't ever, ever, have to face such choices: sign army contract or sign ten thousand-dollar promissory note. there are people in thei country who buy cars that cost as much as my sallie mae loan. i refuse -- i repeat: I REFUSE -- to believe that those people have somehow earned the right to buy sprawling, multi-million dollar homes and, as tom cruise is rumored to have done, order dozens of armani suits to peruse in order to choose the *perfect* one. of course -- these things are not done only at the expense of the working class but at the expense of the forest and the river and the ecosystems that we systematically remove from human understanding. (think _i (heart) huckabees_: what happens in a meadow at sunset? [sic]) that is not a right, it is a sickness. and it is a sickness born of power and exploitation. and that sickness infects us all (SEE Stephen Bezruchka). i am so fucking sick, in fact, that i would rather die than see this sickness through. i am sick of being OWNED or BOUGHT or SOLD and i am sick of people around me -- especially people who are also being OWNED by jobs that pay a fraction of the pay of the CEOs, et al -- telling me that i have to believe in and work within this system.
so tonight, after i opened my sallie mae letter and logged into my online account and applied for "income-contingent" repayment (which makes my monthly payment $68, which is a full $230 LESS than my MONTHLY interest, whcih will -- of course -- accrue and capitalize over the next year while i try to figure out what the fuck to do NEXT), i climbed into the shower. insert your own metaphor here. and i laid down in the tub and i sobbed until i couldn't cry anymore. and i felt like throwing up. and i thought, just for a second, about frances farmer, who had a problem completely unlike mine and totally exactly like mine and if you don't know who she is go find jessica lange's movie about her and THINK ABOUT IT.
let me just say how frustrating it is that my peers are buying homes, planning weddings and babies, saving for retirement, and i feel like i'm 'starting out' so deep in the hole that i can't see the fucking light. so i cried my ass off for about an hour. and now i'm capitulating. what does that mean? it means looking for jobs in places i don't want to live, jobs that will suck my personality out of my face and spit it into the corporate sperm that shoots all over this sad, exploited country. any employment that looks fulfilling to me pays less than $30k/yr -- which is a fine amount if i didn't have ginormously huge, muscule-bound goon loans thumping their fists on the table.
and before you get all stressed and tell me i *chose* to take out those loans and am now responsible for them and i should stop bitching and sell the fuck out already, let me remind you also that there are americans dying in iraq who *chose* to join rotc, et al, in order to go to college. and there is a certain segment of this country's population who didn't ever, ever, have to face such choices: sign army contract or sign ten thousand-dollar promissory note. there are people in thei country who buy cars that cost as much as my sallie mae loan. i refuse -- i repeat: I REFUSE -- to believe that those people have somehow earned the right to buy sprawling, multi-million dollar homes and, as tom cruise is rumored to have done, order dozens of armani suits to peruse in order to choose the *perfect* one. of course -- these things are not done only at the expense of the working class but at the expense of the forest and the river and the ecosystems that we systematically remove from human understanding. (think _i (heart) huckabees_: what happens in a meadow at sunset? [sic]) that is not a right, it is a sickness. and it is a sickness born of power and exploitation. and that sickness infects us all (SEE Stephen Bezruchka). i am so fucking sick, in fact, that i would rather die than see this sickness through. i am sick of being OWNED or BOUGHT or SOLD and i am sick of people around me -- especially people who are also being OWNED by jobs that pay a fraction of the pay of the CEOs, et al -- telling me that i have to believe in and work within this system.
so tonight, after i opened my sallie mae letter and logged into my online account and applied for "income-contingent" repayment (which makes my monthly payment $68, which is a full $230 LESS than my MONTHLY interest, whcih will -- of course -- accrue and capitalize over the next year while i try to figure out what the fuck to do NEXT), i climbed into the shower. insert your own metaphor here. and i laid down in the tub and i sobbed until i couldn't cry anymore. and i felt like throwing up. and i thought, just for a second, about frances farmer, who had a problem completely unlike mine and totally exactly like mine and if you don't know who she is go find jessica lange's movie about her and THINK ABOUT IT.
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