I will be 54 next month. I am in the process of getting
divorced, I have been living here alone for nearly one year. I filed my tax
return today, and I owe $982 dollars in federal income tax. I am a graduate student, and I earned
$17,000 last year, working in my professor’s lab.
It is shameful--sinful--to think that a country as wealthy
as the US would try to hang a college student upside down and shake a thousand dollars out of
her pockets. This is money I could use for rent and food. You know, basic survival.
I mean, it's not like I have a big house with a two-car garage and a giant flat
screen TV. I don’t own a house. Or a TV. I don’t even
own a toilet.
I DON’T HAVE INDOOR PLUMBING—OK??
As if I were pulling the wool over Uncle Sam’s eyes…yeah, a
big ol’ scam artist living in a log cabin in the forests of Alaska…rubbing her
greedy little hands over her secret pile of gold and laughing at the IRS.
While riding her flying unicorn to campus each day: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!
As a full-time student, shouldn’t I be getting a break on my
education? I'm spending lots of time and money in order to make myself a better, more productive citizen. And this was not a particularly good year: Joe left, I had over $1,000 in medical expenses, and now $982 in taxes. Plus,
I had the complete misfortune to fall in love with a man who is living with
someone else. Even he himself told me today that I ought to find another fish
in the sea.
All of this has driven me into a deep depression on this
lovely and bright afternoon. I didn’t leave the house. I wish I could summon
the flying unicorn and fly the nearly four thousand miles to
Eric’s door for cake and wine. Or sit in Mimi’s TV room watching movies and listening
to her kids’ lively banter like we did on Christmas Day.
Where’s the rich, full life I could have had? I carry on,
happy as it is possible for me to be happy, half scared, half amused at the
time passing, for the most part OK with my chosen life, until reality points its
long ugly finger in my face to remind me: “You are nothing but an outlier; few
people know or care about your struggle, and if you were born ten thousand
years ago, a lion or a bear would have caught you easily and ripped you to
pieces and weeded you out of the population.”
This is what happens in one’s fifth Alaskan spring. The days
are bright, but my thoughts are locked in dark freezing November. It
will take a while to thaw.
