Debt has made me feel morally smaller, not only financially trapped

Dear Delyara, I wish people talked about this part more honestly. Debt is not only numbers. It is shame. It is posture. It is the slow erosion of wanting. It is the way you stop looking at your own needs as real needs and start treating them like requests that should probably be refused. It is looking at a better pair of shoes and immediately deciding your current pain is more affordable than the price tag. I can feel debt in my body now — in how quickly I say no to myself, in how much I dread the post, in how carefully I talk about money around the children, in how often my mind runs private arithmetic while the rest of me is supposed to be present elsewhere. That is what exhausts me. Not just paying it. Being psychologically shaped by it. I don’t want fear and reduction to become my personality. Some days, I think they already have begun trying.