The Biggest

I am sitting here in the library.

A library that is unfamiliar to me. There are no librarians I know. I can't find any of the books I need... there are no familiar faces.

This has been one of those weeks.

I give it until Saturday morning before I start crying. But I feel it building up. I'll try and warn you before the tears start. But I'm not making any promises.

This is one of the prices you pay for being the oldest. It's no one's fault. Nothing was necessarily done wrong. This is just what happens. You don't know the best way. The most efficient way. Things have changed and every day that passes, people who do their jobs well are harder and harder to find.

I am twenty years old. Living on my own for twenty-five months. Three addresses in... I have a pet and a car and a full-time job, which I've had for three years. I've been in school since January of 2006. I have an Associates Degree and a few extra credit hours.

And I am spending my days getting paper cuts and opening the mail.

I have no plans.

I have no earthly idea what is going on.

Or even what to do next.

And between Tuesday and Wednesday of this week... the deal seemed to be sealed.

A letter came in the mail.

Letters in the mail are either a) really good, sweet things; or b) horrible things.

This time, it was in between. (Even now I understand that things could be SO much worse. This situation is really erring on the safe side, on the manageable side.)

I graduated in May and decided to cut back on some of my school hours. For five semesters now, I've been taking 5 classes and working full time. It was time to take a break. So I'm enrolled in one class and one lab.

4 credit hours. Anatomy. That class in and of itself is going to kick my butt.

Then I get this letter.

"Because you have dropped below official part-time student status (which is 6 hours), you will be required to being repayment of your Stafford Student Loans in 90 days."

I am two credit hours shy of being in the clear.

Two.

Rose, in the financial aid office, laughed at me.

The phone number the loan people gave me only sends me to a machine.

There are no real people anywhere to be found to understand my predicament.

So on November 2nd I will begin a ten year process of paying for two student loans that somehow accrued a stupid amount of money.

Money I had to use to pay for classes, for $200 parking tags, for $400 books.

And this time next year, unless a miracle happens, I'll be taking out more loans to finish a BS and MS degree at a real university... with hopes of becoming a nurse or an occupational therapist.

To make matters worse... I went and had a photo shoot with four of the most beautiful kids I've seen in a very long time. After the first roll of film, my camera decides to break.

The diagnosis? Another couple of hundred and three months to fix it.... because "they" (once again, the invisible them who rule the world) don't make film cameras anymore.

On top of all the other evil in this world... we are losing an art form to boot.

I'm being dramatic now. I realize this. I also realize that nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and that someone always has it worse. And I'm worrying a few verses in my head like loose teeth.

"Do not be anxious about anything...."

"Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will take care of itself...."

Or my favorite. "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to their life?"

How is it that I know this...

But I just don't remember.

I just don't really know.

One of my favorite men in the world wrote some similar words the other day. His advice echoes in my ears (take a deep breath and swim towards the light) and I'd give anything to be with him and my father (two of the most intelligent, endearing men I've ever known) in the Colorado Mountains. Not that in the valley all problems disappear.

But the sky is bigger.

And I need to be reminded that I am not the biggest.