immaturity does crazy things with our heads, mine in particular. the naiveness of my youth had me believe that all one had to do to rid themself of something or someone unpleasant was to ignore it, to pretend it didn't exist, and/or to avoid dealing with it at all costs. which, in a conceptual sort of way works just fine; unfortunately, reality, as in this regard, deals in the definitive-laying waste to the idealism of relativity and subjectivity-demanding, by inevitability or a personal conviction to grow up, accountability and ownership despite the horrors it might, and probably will, entail. i know this now more than ever as of tonight when i began the dreadful search into my credit.

see, back at the tender age of 18 i foolishly accepted a credit card to american eagle and exxon, then opened a checking account at a bank. a few years later i bought a brand-spanking-new car and took out a student loan for school. i did all this in the face of my parent's advice against it; afterall, at the time, i was working more than enough to supplement my bills and anyways, i seemed to be doing just fine. but as dad knows best, i wasn't so great at balancing a check book or remembering to pay my bills on time. before i knew it, i had bad marks on my credit report and before anyone knew it, 9-11 happened. nuff said.

i vowed years and years ago to distance myself from any sort of credit card (as if anyone in their right mind would give me one) and bank. from that point on i became a "cash is cash does" sort of girl. but that didn't stop the collectors, they kept sending me threatening letters and i kept, except for the occasional walk down memroy lane, throwing them away without even opening them. i had heard that after 4 or 7 years if you haven't made payment or contact with your debtors the discrepancies go away; and so, i've waited to the point of forgetting.

then tonight something said in conversation with jon had me switching online gears from myspace.com to annualcreditreport.com. i began wondering what might be in there. i seemed to have cleaned up my act pretty good within the past couple of years but heaven and experian only knows just how nasty that past of mine might be. and not only that but, since it has been 7 plus years for alot of my debts, and since i do remember a letter here and there from attorney offices about variuos debts, the likelihood is that: had i not ignored those letters i could have filed a Statue Of Limitations and be free of my past but, because i chose to close my eyes to reality i, in all probablity, now have judgements against me that can last a lifetime. and the really sad thing is, had i made contact with my creditors orginally, all this could have been cleared away for a few hundred dollars. i probably spent that, and then some, on starbucks alone last year.

i have no idea yet if repairing my credit is do-able but at least i'm looking at it in it's ugly face and not one bit afraid to french it if i have to.