A lot of life has been getting by.  I think at a certain financial or social status that is the case for many people.

It's good to have to strive, but to have certain things be impossible or out of reach is depression-inducing.  Ok I will try not to ramble too much.  So here it is.  I never really wanted to become a teacher, but I was confused and lost in my 20s, and my aunt encouraged me to teach, so I did.  It was not a great fit.  I am doing it part time while getting my master's, it is extremely stressful.  What really burned me up was that I had so much owed in loans.  I had my BA in English, which was fine, and I didn't mind incurring the debt for that because I really liked it.  I ended up incurring more when I went back to education college in the early 2000s.  What I resented was the debt for a career that I'd grown to hate.  I had put off getting my master's for 20 years due to fear of incurring more debt.  For me, I never went into business or had any other talent in which I would succeed that way.  I was good in school, so it was the route for me, but an expensive route.  After 19 years, I had paid off 10k more than I owed on the loan, yet the balance was still exactly the same as the day I left due to interest.  I was turned down for teacher loan cancellation a couple of times.  I just could not understand why the balance would not go down, a low interest rate.  A couple of my friends had their loans cancelled due to working in public service. They encouraged me to apply.  In my negativity and depression a few years back I didn't because I had been rejected a couple of times before.  But they got theirs cancelled, so I thought what the hell.

Six weeks ago I applied.  It took me like eight hours and two days to find all of my tax records for the past 20 years or so. I am pretty good at record keeping so I found them.  They look up your employer by their tax ID. Four of five of my employers participated in the program, and I had way beyond the ten years of payments required.  I had 20 years worth.  Long story short-I DON'T HAVE A LOAN ANYMORE!!  I QUALIFIED!  My entire bachelor's degree and education degree IS PAID OFF COMPLETELY! If it weren't for the interest it would have been paid off years ago, so I think it's fair.  There are people out there who will say it's unfair, whatever. I could not believe my luck...just really couldn't beleive it.  But then I realized it wasn't luck. It was work. And a lot of it.  I've become so negative and pessimistic, with my depressive outlook and different challenges that I had faced. I had developed learned helplessness all of my life, with the DV and abuse in my background, with bullying employers, with the pandemic, deaths in family, and the recession in 2008 in which I was unemployed and my 401K retirement was absolutley drained. I will have to build that back up. It's been a rough ride. 

I worked in a ridiculously hard job for almost 20 years.  I've had loaded guns brought into my classroom. I developed a worsening PTSD and was nearly disabled due to it. I had the crap beat out of me in student fights, left with bruises, and a jaw that wouldn't open and an adminstration who could have cared less and hated me for having the resulting mental illness that was caused by all the stress. The animosity and hate I've encountered in this career...the sexual harassment...there were days that I couldn't believe I actually paid to get training to do this...at one time I was bringing home a mere $450.00 per week-that was the cap on my earning potential ten years ago.  I let that sink in now and it blows my mind.

I got the excellent news this week and I think it's fair.  If you work in public service-police, firefighter, medicine, nonprofit, etc. and you have a federal loan, I would highly recommend you apply!  We give a lot to our society and get hate and lack of gratitude in return.  Society functions on our expertise and efforts and I see some people have finally recognized this.  Without teachers, doctors, essential workers...where would we be?  People treat essential workers like they are trash.  I see it happen all the time to my colleagues, I hear of doctors being treated badly.  I feel like people bite the hand that feeds.

Anyway, I consider this excellent news for which I am extremely grateful. It also reminds me that all this work that I thought was going into a black hole did not.  The massive amount of money and daily effort to get it paid off has amounted to something!  I never missed payments, didn't default and hung in there.  I will be responsible for my current loan for my masters, but it will be a manageable amount, and my earning potential will be much higher.

Additionally, my car is now paid off.  My phone is paid off.  Another balance I have will be paid off in February. I have a small credit card amount, other than that, this is really great.  My finances are managed and I will shortly have a master's degree and some interesting work options.  I am a little less stuck in my typical learned helplessness and I see that some efforts do matter. I trust going forward that I will achieve even more, an opportunity to move to a different location, a cool new place to work, and maybe even more positive and better relationships. It has been a lifetime of work toward this.

I'm glad I didn't completely give up. I essentially did that in my attempt during the recession.  Two weeks in hospital was not fun. PTSD and depression are real and serious, but I think can be overcome or at least managed. It's not easy to hang in there but it does pay off.  

Anyone in my life who isn't happy for me can simply keep walking. There seem to be a lot of people like this. I won't be sharing much and readily as many people are so drowning in their own unhappiness that they can't share mine. That is their journey and they can take it without me.  But I am very grateful today for a lot of things. And, I did get my migraine medicine that was denied covered in injection form!  Another win!  I guess not everything has to be negative all the time but depression tells us it is.