No, I will not be applying for student loan relief

I'm not bought that cheaply, President Biden

At least four times this week I’ve been asked if I’m going to apply for the $10,000 relief that I’m “eligible” for toward my student loans.

Every time that I’ve been posed the query, I have said “no, I’m not.”

A little bit of history is in order.

I spent three years at a community college, working toward an associate degree so that I could transfer to a larger school. I did that in 1995. At the time I wanted to go into journalism. But UNC Chapel Hill said that they couldn’t fit me into their program. So I went to the other school that I applied for: Elon College (now Elon University).

It wasn’t cheap.

I ended up spending four years at Elon (guess you could say that I was upholding the family tradition of being a seven-year senior), after changing majors. Halfway through my first year there I decided that I enjoyed op-ed writing more than straight-up reporting, and became a history major. I graduated in 1999 with a bachelor of arts in historical studies. With an intention that I would teach with it or possibly getting into reporting after all, for a few years. And that along the way I would have a place of my own and a career and fall in love and get married and have kids and all the while paying off the loans.

Well, we plan. God laughs.

A few months after graduating from Elon the first symptoms of bipolar disorder violently erupted into my life. I can still remember the week in January 2000 when it happened, during a very bleak and icebound winter. But I didn’t know what was happening to me at the time. The diagnosis came four years later.

Manic depression derailed everything.

I worked for awhile as an investigative reporter in Asheville, North Carolina. And a few months into that career I wrecked it, during what I recognize now was a manic episode. That was about the time I started dating the woman who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

We ended up getting married. Six years later she left me, because I was too difficult to live with. Also because of bipolar disorder.

I have held more jobs than most people probably will have in a lifetime. I’ve been a teacher, a journalist (again), an Amazon warehouse worker, a videographer… and now I’m in the mental health field. Ironically helping others with mental illness and hoping they have a better time living with their diagnoses than I had with mine.

I don’t make longterm plans like that anymore.

But always in the back of my mind, there was the intention to make good on my vow to pay back what I owe to the creditor who made it possible for me to get a higher education.

I took out the loans. They are MY responsibility.

Not anyone else’s.

That part of the plan has remained. And thankfully I’m moving into a position where I can at last start paying back what I owe. I’m looking forward to it.

I may be old and gray when the loans are repaid. But they will be.

And it will be on my own and with God’s providence.

Not with any “help” from Joe Biden or anyone else in government.

Biden is doing what he has always done: been a slick politician, with neither concern nor cognition of the magnitude of his actions. Student loan “forgiveness” is going to cost this country billions upon billions of dollars that it cannot afford and that cannot be simply printed out of thin air.

If I were to accept student loan relief, it would go against everything I’ve come to believe about being a responsible and honorable citizen.

If I were to take Biden’s handout, I would be selling off part of my soul. If not all of it.

I may be poorer for not taking loan relief, but I will be poor AND honest, at least.

I didn’t ask to have bipolar disorder. It upended practically every hope I’ve had about having a full and happy life as I had always dreamed of enjoying.

But I will NOT let it stop me from doing the right thing on this, or any other matter.

I’m not bought that cheaply, Mister President.

But I doubt Biden ever understood the concept of honor, anyway.