First job out of college (part 12)

It started when I asked her about her major in college. She told me that she majored in English but after four years she only earned her associate's degree. During that time period, she accumulated over $10000 in student debt that her parents would eventually have to pay off for her. When I asked her about how that happened, she told me that she suffered from depression and had to take medication along with visit a therapist on a monthly basis. Apparently, depression ran in her family as her mother suffered from it as well and Julia described her mom as being crazy. As a child through adulthood, Julia’s mom was verbally and physically abusive. She also told me that she had a weight problem until after high school. These were all things I never would have guessed just by looking at her. When I first met her, I just assumed all of the Asian stereotypes applied to her.

During bites of my quesadilla, she was complaining about her boyfriend a little bit. She didn’t think very highly of him and even called him a loser at one point. I couldn’t help to think that maybe she was so receptive to me because she was looking at me like a backup or replacement in the event that things with sour with George. However, I knew that it would be silly and a waste of time to wait around for that to happen. After finishing our food and talking for an hour, we both went our separate ways. It was the first time I ever took a woman out to dinner and it went pretty well. I didn’t expect to see her or talk to her again.

From when I started my first job, I made the decision that I never wanted to get married or have children. While my main reason is that I don’t want to work any harder to provide for a wife and children, the reality is that marriage and children open up a whole mess of exposure to a man. Growing up through high school and college, I’ve heard the horror stories of how men lost half of their stuff through divorces. My dad told me about a mortgage broker who lost more than $5 million over the course of two divorces. As bad as that sounded, marriage/divorce laws were even worse. If a child is involved, the woman usually gets custody and the man is usually required to pay child support. Child support is actually something that men can go to jail for if they don’t pay. Depending on the state, a man could be stuck with alimony that lasts a lifetime and several states could stack on multiple penalties such as lifetime alimony, child support, and losing half of your stuff during a divorce. I knew all of this growing up.

When I told my parents I had put down my life on spreadsheets and had a plan of how much money I was going to save by a certain age, they poked fun at me. They told me that I didn’t account for when I got married and had children. To which, I gave them both a good reason for why those factors were not accounted for in my calculations. I would forgo them. This is a cruel fact of reality that hurt them both early on. It hurt my mom much more so because she eventually wanted to have grandchildren. For years, they would try to convince me of why I should settle down with a woman but every time I would dump a whole load of logic of why marriage was a bad idea on them. The risk just wasn’t worth the rewards. I intended to live life alone and die alone. It was the only way I knew how to live.