People write me about student debt

And some of them are talking about wanting to end their lives. They are not speaking from “weakness” or “stupidity.” They’re just tired. They feel done. “I’ve never had serious issues with suicidal ideation, but damnit, this is causing that for me,” one woman wrote – she ended up having trouble with her loans due to mounting health problems. Debt collectors are harassing her 81-year-old grandmother. Every time she applied for a forebearance, her paperwork was conveniently “lost,” she says. She suspects they wanted her to go into default early. Are we honestly going to be OK with it when it happens to more and more people?

Since my piece on student debt was reprinted by AlterNet, I’ve had all sorts of trolls showing up here, in the meantime. Here they are, distilled to their essence:

Pay the money, bitch!
It’s gone, baby, gone. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be willing to negotiate with the loan company for a fair amount, considering all of the money I have already sunk into my loans. If I’m in a position to negotiate, I will do so. Neither am I above asking for help with my loans. But most of the people close to me are also having financial troubles.

You’re a thief! You planned this! Got a fancy education then decided you didn’t have to pay the money back!
Ha ha. Ha ha ha.

Coward! You ran away to Russia!
I’m in Russia on a work visa. As a former USSR citizen and wife of a Russian citizen, I am entitled to residency – but in Moscow, that’s a prohibitively expensive process for me at the moment. In my husband’s hometown, it doesn’t make economic sense. I didn’t “run away” – though working abroad was ultimately a smart decision for someone with my skills and background. Many people in similar situations cannot say the same.

That’s what you get for being uppity and a part of the “me generation”
What about the generations that came before? Our collective values as such that people are considered “uppity” for wanting to get a good education. And they’re such that a good education comes attached with ridiculous costs. And they’re such that when you are 18-year-old, you are told that student loans are “a good way to build credit.”

Now responsible people like me will have to pay for your sins!
Responsible people have ended up bailing out Wall Street. At this point, we need to re-think the entire system of lending in this country. Not to mention re-thinking higher education and its costs. I could be quiet about my debt problems, or I could go public with the issue – but not as a means of going, “Hey guys! Take responsibility for my problem!”

Well, you just suck. As opposed to me. I mean, look at me! *hold on, let me dust off the halo for a second* Where was I? Ah, yes. The only thing your example proves is that some people in our society are bad apples. I worked hard all of my life – and will never be in the situation you’re in. I’m not a freeloader or a thief – and neither am I an entitled jackass who thinks that everything ought to be handed to me on a silver platter. That’s the difference between you and me. That’s why I matter. That’s why you don’t matter – aside from being an example of how not to live one’s life.
I had a guy tell me once that the only reason I *needed* student loans in the first place is because I was not smart enough to get into university “on merit.” Smart people can always score a full ride to a school of their choice, you see. Everyone else should not go to school – or have the good grace to be born rich. Of course, he and his family would never end up in my shoes. Except that years later, they did. When their eldest daughter got a rare illness and the insurance company screwed her. That was when their financial free-fall started. The man who said those hurtful words to me now works as a sales clerk – way past retirement age. His family home has been repo’ed. I’m not saying this because I want to gloat – what happened to them is a goddamn tragedy. And it goes to show. Under the current system, none of us are safe from harm.

Its your parents’ fault! They should have saved up for college!
College costs too much in the United States. Most normal families can’t afford it. It doesn’t seem like a problem at first – because of course something great ought to cost a lot! Right? It made sense to me as a kid. If we don’t think that people ought to have adequate access to health care, when it comes to education, we’re even worse. And we’ve completely devalued vocational schools and made apprenticeships obsolete, which compounds the problem.

They ought to strip you of your citizenship! You ought to have your child taken away! I hope the lenders DO drive you to suicide!
I’m including this as an example of how vicious ordinary people are to other ordinary people. Pitting us against each other is clever. It’s something that has always been done, throughout the ages, by those in power. Throw a few bones to the rabble. Let them fight each other for scraps. Sell them a convenient fairy tale about how they have every chance to become the next Bill Gates in the meantime – even though an entire economic system’s existence depends on a bunch of them being in poverty, while the rest cling desperately to middle-class status. It’s a fool-proof plan. Or is it?

I’ve been working

Or, you know, goofing off, depending on how you look at it.

You know, Ekaterina Zatuliveter is NOT a spy. I’m amazed at the slut-shaming this woman has endured. All because she’s Russian and gravitates towards older, powerful men. In a normal world, this would have been a phase she would have grown out of – upon which she would have penned a whimsical screenplay about it. You know, something like “Guinevere,” but with more mass market appeal.

Also,  my translation of the Nicholas Seeley interview with Sergei Lukyanenko, Russian fantasy writer extraodinaire and author of “Night Watch,” et al, is out in Strange Horizons. This was a trilateral effort: Nick, Shari Perkins, and myself.

Went to the “Khodorkovsky” premiere at Artdokfest film festival today. Didn’t stick around. They herded the guests into a ridiculous line – honestly, the Khudozhestvenny movie theater is not the best place for a festival of this magnitude. The woman in line next to me had huge sapphire earrings like something out of a period drama. I got bored very quickly. Didn’t get my goddamn press badge either, will have to go tomorrow. “But we e-mailed you that you have to get it by six!” “No you did not, goddamit!” Anyway, I warned them that I’ll be arriving to claim my badge with an infant in tow tomorrow, festival ambiance be damned.

‘Till the fat lady sings

Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?
Here’s what she said to me…

I had a friend, a slightly older chap, who had a young daughter – and would complain incessantly about how much OLDER he felt now that she was born. Besides the sheer weight of responsibility – very small children are so frighteningly and touchingly helpless, after all – there was also the fact that he just felt “done.” He was finished with life’s most exciting events, he said: falling in love, getting married, having a baby. To make things even worse, he had money and professional success. There was not a whole lot left to strive for, unless he started a secret affair with some appropriately conniving vixen, and he had the misfortune of being devoted to his lovely wife. It was like living in a country where history was over.

I feel much younger now that I’ve had Lev. History is not over – historic events fly past like bullets, which you have to dodge. You never know which one might undo you or someone you love. I don’t know where I find the strength for anything – or how on earth we have managed to survive so far. I’m contemplating ruinage of my credit history. Debts don’t get smaller, they get bigger. Teeth crumble inside my head. Gossip hisses like static around my husband and I. I feel myself folding and collapsing under the weight of Every Little Thing Gone Wrong – and then, when I’m down there, beneath the pile, I begin to feel as if I am five years old again, and hiding under coats and jackets piled up in an apartment during a party in winter. The coats and jackets retain the scent of snow. It’s dark outside – it’s always dark during the days of my second childhood.

We are not “the deserving poor.” We are survivalists. I used to think that I would just give away my money – give and give it away, not making a dent in my student debt for years and pretending as though that’s the way things are supposed to be, because zero customer protection translates into life ruinage for thousands of people like me – but then my body started falling apart, and I realized that my priorities would have to change. I’ve skimmed on healthcare for years in order to appease the vengeful Sallie Mae god. But I can’t afford to crap out early – because, you know, Lyovka. So when we can afford to go to the sea, for example – we go to the sea, and park our asses in front of it, and stare. We buy good red wine and drink it from mugs and listen to Noize MC.

“Mommy is not going to be a slave to the system,” I murmur to my son as I bathe him. “She’s going to occupy student debt.” “Hawww,” He replies sagely. His eyes are swamp-coloured, like his father’s.

“You didn’t make mommy boring – mommy’s life is at its most exciting yet!” I tell him. It seems hilarious to contemplate my friends – their newfound, self-proclaimed “boringness” like a forcefield around them. In order to be nice and boring, you have to be able to afford it first.

This past winter, when Mikhail Ugarov invited a bunch of playwrights to write on the subject of repressions, I wrote about fear – fearing for myself, my child (I was pregnant at the time), other people whom I love. Slava Durnenkov, meanwhile, had this to say:

“I feel as though I can work. Living isn’t possible – working is.”

And that’s what we do, I guess: we work. We work and see each other through the haze of the tasks in front of us, whether on Facebook or in real life. We pass through each other’s kitchens. We exchange witticisms. There is a memory I have of the Garden Ring: my husband and I walking alongside Slava in the dark (remember – it’s always dark). The pavement is wet. I like Slava. He radiates approval. I am the perfect wife for my husband. “May you live,” he says, clasping our hands, joining us, like a priest. “May you live.”

When I ask my husband if he wants his freedom, he says he doesn’t. “But you and I could have torn up the town for a little longer,” he smiles. “But what about…” I mention the ways in which we still do.

He laughs. His definition of “tearing up the town” is radically different from mine.