We’re Choking on Coins, Capitalism, & Conspicuous Consumption & It’s Not Cute
Don’t tie your worth to what you produce
What if you’re losing a game you never wanted to play? What if it was a game where to win you needed all the aces. Everyone else knows the game because they’ve played it before; they were deck-shufflers out of the womb. And there they go, tucking the aces up their sleeve. So, you place your bets, believing you can beat the house. You’ve studied the cards, you’ve put in the work. What you don’t know is this: the house always wins and you’ll always lose.
Yet, we keep on playing.
A week after my I reverted to from Chapter 13 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, I received a flood of welcome back, baby letters from Navient and a pile of other private lenders I owe money to because the girl who grew up poor in Brooklyn buying bodega chicken legs and selling her wares on a sheet on Thirteenth Avenue wanted an Ivy League degree. Because the degree meant something.
This kid was going places.
What I didn’t know was those places would be dictated by the monthly bills I’d have to pay. Lenders in call centers determined my future. I was twenty-five and twenty-seven when I took out the loans to pay for graduate school, and who knew I’d be forty-five and still wincing…
