I could see how she came to the conclusions she did, but was surprised that she didn't pursue it further to understand things more deeply-- that she took a peek at a part of me and my life and made a series of conclusions were way off-base. I'll be taking the letter to Canon Marcia and talking over the implications of it with her and asking her guidance. I trust her like no one else in my life and know that what Pauline and Mike have both said, is correct: I misjudged Katie, if she thinks so little of me.

To Whom It May Concern:

My life has been far from perfect.

My mother was an abused child and an abuser, something she struggled unsuccessfully to overcome. My brother and I burned her paddles in the pot belly woodburning stove. We shivered beneath her wild mood swings. My father often wasn't there, finding solace in other places because of his unwillingness to cope with her, which was nice for him, because he could leave. When I got old enough to leave home, I did, and I went from one abusive relationship to another because I'd grown up being sure I was less than dirt.

Finally, after several years down the same miserable paths with the same kinds of miserable men, I woke up and realized that I didn't have be beaten over and over again to be loved. I think about the time that Frank said he wanted to take me to a remote place where no one could hear me scream when he beat me, I realized that if I kept involved with him and men like him, I was going to die. At the ripe old age of 21, I didn't want to die, particularly at the hands of a psychopath.

It took a year or two, but I finally met Bill. Bill was a nice man -- truly gentle and kind. He and I were together for three years. In that time, I made a lot of mistakes and at the same time, I learned that I didn't have to be abused to be loved. We went our separate ways, but I knew that I wasn't this horrible unlovable person any more. I still suspected it might be true, but now, I had all these reasons to doubt it and I went where it was scariest and took it to heart that I might actually be lovable.

There was Keith. He was kind of a weird goon, who fell in love with me way too fast and I learned not to leap before I looked. Shortly after our break up, I spent a week in the hospital on a suicide watch because I'd decided that after 8 years, that maybe I was actually up to dealing with all the abuse I'd suffered during the Frank era and had opened a can of worms, I wasn't ready to fry up and put into sandwiches at the time. I got a lot more therapy and a lot more support from dear friends, like Robin and Sue.

The one good thing about Frank was that I'd gone back to school, a path which I had continued through Bill and Keith. I worked and took out loans to pay for school and had planned to go into teaching ESL, something I was quite good at, according to all my references and years of practice as an undergraduate. However, I wasn't prepared for graduating and going into a teaching credential program 6 months after being so damned unstable and suffering from the long-term effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and was drummed out of the program in 2 months.

I was at a total loss as to what to do with my life. I'd graduated at the height of the recession of the early 90's with a liberal arts degree, few skills and little confidence in anything but my ability to teach. And my confidence in my ability to teach had been shattered when I was drummed out of the program so quickly.

I worked at anything and everything -- temporary, part-time, you name it to make ends meet, and was constantly having to file for unemployment deferments or underemployed forbearances for my student loans, which after the loan companies kept claiming to lose the paperwork, to my shame and horror, I ended up defaulting on them. I don't think I've ever been quite so depressed and sure I couldn't be more than that period in my life. I'd honestly thought that if I had a degree, it would mean something, other than excessive debt. I started looking into graduate school and then I had to reconsider it.

After being celibate for a year and a half, I had a night of ridiculously poor judgement and got pregnant. Not one of my brighter moments, considering my marital and economic status. And while normally, I'd have considered an abortion, after two previous abortions, I felt like God was kicking me in the ass. I prayed and I wondered and I contemplated and I debated what to do. Here was this opportunity to have a child that I wanted so badly, but for whom I was so woefully unprepared. It made no common sense to keep this child, but I couldn't give him up because I wanted him so much. No amount of student loan debt or graduate school could change that. I really wanted that baby and was willing to go to the ends of the earth to have him and while it didn't make common sense it did make uncommon sense.

I got a job that I was very very good at that paid enough to cover bills. It had no benefits, but I had an opportunity to learn like mad at it, and it meant I could work towards something better. And I did. I worked right up until my eighth month and then left on disability.

Two weeks post-partum, I had a chance to get a job at the university with more pay benefits and gave notice at the previous job. Due to politics beyond my control, there was no way I'd be able to retain the job because they had purposely misrepresented it to me and three previous employees. The employee that had been there before me had decked someone in frustration -- a fact I learned AFTER I took the job, though I'd been told at the interview that "it just hadn't worked out." The day after I left the job, I started working in the university temp pool.

The week my last workman's compensation check came in, I got the job I held at the university for 5 years. It was a hellish job that I held onto tenaciously, so I could support my son. They knew that they could be awful to me because I needed that job so badly. Then I realized much like the abuse I'd sworn off from men, that I didn't have to take abuse at work, so I found my current job which not only pays 25% more a month, but retained all of my university benefits and the biggest difference of all is that I LOVE this job. About two years before that, Mike, a long-time friend, and I fell madly in love. And unlike any other relationship, there wasn't any panic or wild feelings of euphoria, but this abiding sense of "So this was God's plan all along." I had a relationship that was based on mutual love, respect and kindness. I loved a dear long-time friend and he loved me. Russell sensed the stability that we had between us and in a few months time, asked,"When will Mike be my daddy?" Both of us, said simply,"We don't know." Last year, when he proposed and I accepted, we had to start thinking about that.

Unfortunately, the new job only amounted to $300 net extra a month, which went immediately into the extra rent we had been paying with difficulty for over a year, when we moved suddenly because a child had attacked Russell and his parents had severely downplayed the fact that their large athletic 5 year old had picked my slight 4 year old child up by his face and threw him like a rag doll onto the cement face first. The sound of his head hitting the cement, still makes my stomach turn because I can still hear it in my head. I saw the child approaching Russell and couldn't get to Russell fast enough -- it was like a slow motion replay of a bad football injury. Mike and I started looking for a new apartment that night and moved from the place we were in within a week.

During this time, I've made small payments towards my student loans, but I've rarely made enough to cover my own monthly bills, so small payments were all I could afford or for that matter, were all that any of the lending agencies expected me to be able to afford. I sent them detailed records of my earnings and my bills. Even without including Michael in the people for whom I was paying for, my income barely covered my living expenses. This year, was the first year, I didn't qualify for the earned income credit and I only missed it by about $700.

Additionally, when I originally looked into loan consolidation, I was told that they would not consolidate loans that were in default, nor would they work with me unless I was paying $600 a month. My rent had been about $600 a month and then graduated to $875. I simply didn't have that kind of money, so I sent them small checks as I could, made sure that there were tax refunds they could snag and did my best to make good on the loans.

I currently have the wage garnishment, which I know doesn't cover squat, but I also know, I don't have more than squat to give right now. I talked to the lawyer who had to file the garnishment and he knows I don't have squat and said he wouldn't even contest my request to pay a small minimum payment monthly. He knew that I could actually file to pay less than that, but that it was important that someone somewhere knew I was trying. I had thought that originally, that perhaps I could file bankruptcy on these loans because I didn't have the money to pay them and when you're talking about more than you'll make in years, it's overwhelming. Apparently, the ability to file bankruptcy on student loans ended about two years ago, shortly after I asked about it. My ability to gain any clemency on the loans by teaching ended when they defaulted, another fact, I just found out.

When Mike and I discussed being married last year, I simply didn't feel right about inflicting my student loan debt, to the tune of 3X my annual income on Mike. I had figured I would file bankruptcy and clear my record and just start new with everything-- a new life with my new husband with his new degree and new job -- a clean slate.

And then I got diabetes and lost a lot of weight, changed my cycle and got pregnant a year earlier than we'd planned. We discussed getting married immediately, but my doctor warned us against doing things that were stressful because stress would adversely affect my sugars and the baby. Planning a wedding was a stress that he strongly advised against. We listened.

And yet, it kept coming up in our lives....why were we waiting, anyway? I'd accepted his proposal for all the right reasons: I love him wildly; he was gentle kind and good to Russell; he brought a sense of stability and deep and abiding love into my heart. Robin told me, "You two should just run off and get married. You belong together. You're so happy." Well, there was the debt thing. There was the money we didn't have to plan and pay for a big wedding. There was that it made sense to wait until he graduated and had a job.

And now, suddenly, there was going to be a baby. Russell had been after us for a while about how he wanted us to be married and how he wanted Mike to be his dad, because we'd told him that Mike couldn't be his dad until we got married. Children warrant a family and a marriage -- both Mike and I felt that-- above and beyond anything within the walls of my church I feel that. The stability that a committed loving relationship provides is a powerful lesson for children in not only loving someone, but also in demonstrating how people can be there for each other through thick and thin. But we also wanted to feel like we could provide for our children and not be paying off debt until we're dead. Russell has often said how much he wants to live in a house. In order to take on the debt of a house, I didn't want to bring all this other debt into my marriage with Mike. Part of it, is the age old, "I don't think I deserve it," but part of it is that I've been overwhelmed by it for so long, that I didn't want to overwhelm someone else.

It's been Russell's sole desire for a long time that Mike and I get married. What he perhaps didn't know, is that it's all Mike and I have talked about in private for years.

When I started looking into the legal aspects of making Mike Russell's guardian, or even possibly his adoptive parent, in my will, because I didn't want them to be separated from each other, or Russell to be separated from his sister, it started to eat at me more. I asked the lawyer about the debts again. He said the laws had changed -- not only could I not file bankruptcy and include the loans, but consolidation rules had changed, too. He encouraged me to look into it. So I called, and found that I could get a consolidation loan that would pay off the defaulted loans and that they'd work with me to let me pay what I can as I can, which was quite different from what I was told just 3 years ago.

I'll file for the consolidation loan when Mike accepts his first job offer. Mike will have a real job in a year's time, making good money. If I file for the consolidation loan at that time, I can continue to work and devote most or all of my money to paying off the student loans and he can make the bulk of the money needed to sustain our household, in the interim, much as I have these past three years. They said that my minimum monthly payments will be over $600 a month, but that I could get forbearances to pay less, much less, if I wanted to.

I frankly don't want to sign off on something that I can't begin to pay at the moment. I'll wait to sign off on it when I actually have a chance of repaying it at the terms agreed to.

I suppose if I'd explained all of that to Katie, I never would have known how little she thinks of me and I won't have my child in an environment where I'm sure on some level, she might be aware of how little Katie thinks of me.

Pauline will probably take Genevieve at least for the summer, when I work part-time, and that will give me the opportunity to find someone better able to take on full-time care starting in October, if Pauline can't do it. Pauline needs to go to school and that's paramount for her and she was hedging about needing one day off a week, and that would be rather difficult to do, unless I found alternative care for that one day a week, which is a big pain in the butt, though I could probably work it out to telecommute that day, but with an infant, I don't know how much I'd get done.

Tomorrow, I ask Canon Marcia for a bit of her time on Monday or Tuesday before our meeting about the wedding on Wednesday.

The universe doesn't toss stuff like this at your feet without a reason, so I feel like I need to come to some level of peace with this perfectly awful letter.

Thanks for not dying of boredom, while I vent.