I sit at my kitchen table long after the coffee’s gone cold, the mug just something to hold onto. The glow of my laptop paints everything in a quiet blue—my hands, the unpaid bills, the number I keep refreshing even though it never changes.
It doesn’t feel real. It can’t feel real. It’s just a number, I tell myself. Just digits on a screen. But the way my chest tightens says otherwise.
I remember the first day I signed the papers. Everyone said it was an investment. “Future you will be grateful,” they told me. I believed them. I had to believe them. It was the only way forward.
Now future me is here—tired, overworked, calculating interest rates at midnight like it’s some kind of ritual. I do the math over and over, hoping it’ll come out differently this time. If I pay a little extra each month… if I cut back on everything… if nothing goes wrong…
But something always does.
A bill. A repair. Life, refusing to pause while I try to catch up.
I scroll through my bank account, watching my paycheck arrive and then slowly disappear, swallowed by rent, groceries, minimum payments. That word—minimum—feels cruel. Like I’m doing the least, even though it feels like everything.
Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be free of it. To wake up and not think about money first thing. To open my email without bracing myself. To make choices that aren’t filtered through what I owe.
But then the screen flickers, and I’m back.
Still here. Still paying. Still carrying something I can’t put down.
And the hardest part isn’t even the money.
It’s the quiet fear that no matter how hard I try… it might never be enough.
If anyone can help pay student loans it will be very helpful. I have two kids and two jobs trying to look for any assistance possible. I have up to $100,000 worth of student loans.