Debt to Donuts

By: Deborah O'Leary

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January 15, 2009

Wouldn’t it be great if we could live in a world where weight and money were reversed? Dollars would fly right onto our hips and pounds would disappear faster than we could count them. Human nature being what it is, though, everyone would then probably want to be fat and poor.

Which is what I was a couple of years back, when my husband lost his job as an engineer with a big company. At the time, we had two children, about $4300 in credit card debt, and my husband’s $38,000 student loan. Yeah, sure, we had a little money saved up but three months worth of living expenses never seems to actually last that long. That’s because when you’re not working, you have a lot more opportunities to spend money. You also have a lot more time to eat.

I was still working, but my cashier’s job was part-time, just while the kids were in school, and hardly paid enough to cover the bills. Between the pressure of meeting a mortgage and feeding our children, things began to crack. My husband started drinking heavily every night and sex became just an effort we weren't willing to make. I would sneak downstairs in the middle of the night, when the house was asleep, and stuff myself with junk food. I developed a special fondness for Krispy Kremes, which I kept hidden in the back of the medicine cabinet.

Were those glazed midnight treats a guilty pleasure, a release from all the day’s tension? It didn’t feel very pleasurable, shoveling donuts in my mouth in the dark, my husband unemployed and passed out, my children asleep, trusting mommy and daddy to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. It felt more like I was punishing myself for not being able to provide better for my children.

In the six months it took for my husband to find a job, we missed one mortgage payment, avoided more than a few phone calls, and put off my son’s Christmas request for a PlayStation 3. It was the worst 6 months of my life. But we pulled through - and thank heaven, he DID find a job. I know how lucky we are. Except that more of me came out of that nightmare than went in. I had gone from a size 10 to a size 14.

My husband was working but now I hated the way I looked and I worried that he would meet a sexy woman at his office. We made love the night he got the job offer but then we fell back into our old routine again—him drinking every night and me Krispy Kreme-ing my way to oblivion.

One morning, I woke up physically ill from a dream. All the fat and sugar in all the donuts I had ever eaten had joined together to become an enormous blob which was chasing me. I kept calling for my husband to help me, but he was not around. Suddenly I passed a restaurant and saw my husband having lunch with a gorgeous woman at a table by the window. Even though I was right in front of them, on the other side of the glass, pounding mightily for help, they couldn’t see me or hear me. In fact, I noticed suddenly that there were lots of people around but no one could see or hear me. I had become invisible. Only the giant Donut Blob had eyes for me and it was headed straight at me. My heart seized up and I screamed aloud, which woke up both me and my husband.

That very morning, I found a Weight Watchers near me. They had a meeting that night, thank goodness, and the donuts lived another day.

That was a year ago. Since then, I’ve gone from a 14 to a 12. I can’t say it’s been easy. My husband is working longer hours and we still don’t have as much time for intimacy as we did before the extra weight and the extra debt dropped into our lives. But I’m grateful that we managed to shield our children from the worst of that period. And I’ve learned that whether it's calories or dollars I’m adding up, I’ve got to count my blessings first.

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MP

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