the light at the end of the tunnel…
February 2, 2010I know the old joke; “it’s a train”…
Interesting thing happened today; I acknowledged that I was a failure, and I was OK with that. For some people, that’s no big deal, but for me, that’s HUGE. All my life, I’ve been trying to prove that I wasn’t a failure and that I could change the world by my sheer desire to succeed. This overachievment complex comes from a fatehr who refused to acknowledge anything I did was good, and it carried over into my marriage. I picked a woman who I thought would help me be a success, but wound up with someone who hated me when I didn’t become the man she wanted me to become.
Anyway, today I realized that if I added in the car note, rent, my student loan, back taxes, and then child support and alimony, I’d be earning exactly -$1000 a month. That scared me at first, and then I realized that there were bankruptcy laws for a reason. I failed, but the truth is that I’ve been living on the edge of failure for a long time, and this is just the dues for the piper. Yes, I’m probably going to have to declare bankruptcy. Yes, the future is quite uncertain because I’m not sure how much of my debt can be discharged (if any; I don’t really have a lot of credit card debt). Yes, I’m OK with it.
You see, despite the fact that I’ve never wanted to fail at anything, my need for success has always been augmented with a strong sense of engineering; I make the most of a bad situation. Now that I’ve determined that the worst case scenario is going to happen, I can plan for it, and step 1 is making sure that while my kids are provided for, X gets as few of my assets as I can give her.
Now that I’ve seen the bottom of the pit, I can start climbing.
Your post started off sounding like it might be negative in tone, but I actually really found what you had to say refreshing, and honest, and well, so true! Once you come to terms with the issue at hand, whether that’s a feeling of failure, or realization that you are going to have trouble making ends meet…once you embrace it and figure out what to do to climb out, the faster you climb out. It’s the denial that causes failure. At least in my opinion. Nicely put.