I am ashamed of how much debt has changed the way I think about myself

Dear Delyara, It has gone deeper than numbers. It’s in the way I look at myself in shops. The way I feel about wanting things. The speed with which I say no to my own comfort. The quiet humiliation of needing plans, systems, rearrangements, calls, calculations, all for what should be ordinary life. Debt has entered my self-concept in ways I find hard to forgive. I don’t only feel under pressure. I feel reduced by it. And that reduction is hard to speak about because from the outside, I still look normal enough. The world sees a woman budgeting. I feel like a woman shrinking.