A Tax Day Much Worse Than Yours

A reader writes:

I’d like this to be anonymous, please. Tomorrow, it will have been a month since I tried to commit suicide.

Well, I had a plan, I had a history of and was going through a severe downward spiral of depression brought on by a lifetime of abuse, chemical and hormone imbalances, Februaries, and a devastating final blow to my family’s financial survival. At this point, I had been bouncing around on meds with my PCP [personal care provider] but really needed a psychiatrist, a specialist, but I couldn’t get an appointment for three months with the only psychiatrist I called that was taking new patients. And the rest of THAT story makes for another story about our healthcare system, but for now: finances.

I’ve never been good with money. I liked to have experiences, not things. I literally haven’t owned an entertainment unit in ten years. I can’t stomach spending the money on it. Concerts, trips, kids activities, preschool tuition—that was important to me.

Before marriage and kids, I went to the notorious Art Institute (my second try at college—depression got the best of me my 1st time and I dropped out three years in). I got a fun, creative, and inspiring $70K education that has yet to bring me that salary in one year. After college, I worked for about a year-and-a-half before I was laid off five months pregnant due to the financial crisis in ‘07/’08.

My husband’s career, meanwhile, was steadily elevating. No college. Zip. But he took care of us enough to have another baby 2-1/2 years later and buy a house with a mortgage that was just $50 more than the apartment we were renting (which was a shit-hole). Things were looking UP for us, but I think the real downfall started then.

With no savings of any kind (we scraped pennies together for the 3% FHA down payment), we slowly dug our graves. We maxed out our credit cards on new floors and defaulted. We took credit at furniture stores and defaulted. Soon, my loans went into default (they wanted over $600 a month even considering our income).

Now we had kids, but we weren’t dead! We have lots of friends, lots of fun stuff to do, and now our kids had social lives, too. Soon, I NEEDED to go back to work for my sense of self-worth and for all the things we wanted to do. I refused to place my kids in one of those daycares that hires 19 year olds for $9/hr (you know, the ones you hear about on the news for forgetting a kid on the bus after a field trip or locking kids in closets). Also, interestingly enough, I’m a terrible classist it seems. If my kids were being minded by someone, the least they could do is enrich their young impressionable minds. My kids would be baby Einsteins!

Private preschool tuition for two, new/used mini-van with the buttons and computer panel, dinners and drinks and concerts and blowing off steam with friends, and finally, last year, our $5,000 medical deductible finally became too much to do. I was working but still making the base $36K/year that I made before I even went back to college in 2003. Let that sink in. I worked as an assistant, with no skills or experience and made the same amount after I went to college, had my own business, built up a portfolio, business contacts and reputation. I obviously failed that test.

Now, March 2016, I was just let go from my job (financial instability of the small businesses for which I continue to work), filed our taxes and was expecting a big return—one that was desperately needed. We were two months behind on every single bill payment, including the mortgage and car. We seemed to owe everyone and their mother $200, like we manufactured Benjamins in our garage. I wasn’t earning my sweet $2200 a month anymore, so we planned on this refund taking us through the next two months, giving me a cushion to find another job.

Well, to my surprise, the government had other plans. Uncle Sam came to collect on the federally backed Sallie Mae loans I’d be unable to keep up with. They took the entire refund before it ever hit our account.

My heart sank. I saw us losing our house, our car, my daughter, with 2-1/2 months left of Pre-K, would have to be pulled from school. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to die. I put the final nail in our coffins. We had nothing. We HAVE nothing. We couldn’t get an apartment for what we pay for our spacious home if we lost it.

My plan? My plan was to drive into oncoming traffic or just slam into the freeway median or drive off a bridge. I have life insurance through my husband’s work, after all. It had to be an accident so that my kids would never suspect my intentions.

Shame. I was so disgusted with myself I couldn’t think of anything except “disgusting piece of shit,” which is actually what I wrote over and over in my journal before and during the first part of my holiday in the cuckoos nest.

So, it’s been a month. With a lot of help from my personal financial advisor (my mom—yes, an almost 40-year-old woman needs her mommy to figure our her finances … shame), we have put together our total debt and planned our escape from this uncharted level of hell.

Trying to get well emotionally while also demolishing the house of lies of our financial situation is very hard and it’s tempting to let the depression wash over me so I don’t have to feel. But, I can never go back there again. Our children are still young and they don’t have to ever remember this time, right? Except for when we tell them about the time we used credit like it was a God-given right as an American, and it destroyed our lives, marriage, and almost destroyed our mommy.