I owe money for the degree I never finished

Dear Delyara, I left college during my third year after my mother became ill. The loans did not leave with me. I owe $37,000 for a degree I do not have. I work as a receptionist at a medical office and make payments large enough to hurt but small enough that the balance barely seems to move. People ask why I never went back. I say life happened. The truth is I am afraid to borrow one more dollar. My mother died two years after I withdrew. Sometimes I resent her for becoming sick, then hate myself immediately. She never asked me to leave school. I chose to care for her because my brother had children and my father was gone. Last week, a patient asked whether I was a nurse because I knew so much about her medication. I said no. She told me I should go back to school. I smiled. Tonight, an automatic payment of $412 came out of my account. It is strange paying every month for the ghost of a qualification, a campus version of myself who still exists somewhere in the financial system even though she never walked across the stage.