Please read the whole thing before you judge me. 

I am 24 years old.  3 years going on 4 I had made a huge mistake I will never forget and always regret.  When I was 21 I thought I had met the man of my life.  He was perfected.  We dated for 8 months before getting married.  Before we got married he had convinced me to merge our bills together.  I figured since we were going to get married we needed to do that anyways.  I signed over all his visa debt to my name that way we would have a lower interest rate with my good credit.  On our honeymoon I realized I didn’t know who I had married.  I knew I had made a big mistake.  3 months later when the first time he got physical, I had to leave him.  It was a very bad situation.  He decided to write up the annulment papers and all I had to do is sign them.  I figured that would be good and have everything all taken care of.  I had a police officer come out with me to sign the papers just in case of any more abuse he might cause to me.  A month later I started to receive collections calls for the visa cards he had.  It turns out in the annulment agreement he had put that what ever was in each of our names is what we had taken on.  Here I was a 21 year old…was debt free…always paid cash for everything to $12,000 in debt and no savings account.  I was physically hurt, emotionally hurt and now financially hurt?  This is something no one needs to go through.  Because prior to our marriage he wanted me to be a stay at home wife, I had quite my job.  I had no job, in debt up to my ears and now broken ribs with no health insurance.  The state of Oregon pressed charges towards him for the physical abuse and he had to pay me $400.  Yeah…..that was it!  Covered one medical bill.  My family who is poor all pitched in a little money along with some friends to get the visa bills caught up so there would be no late fee’s and over fee’s.  The truth is…now I am regretting that now to this day also.  I feel like I owe everyone I know.  I feel bad for buying even the little things I need like deodorant!  I feel so imprisoned in my own life that I have depression.  I can’t afford health insurance because I think of that as a luxury thing and I can’t hold a job because of my mental health otherwise I would have health insurance through that.  I am pretty much stuck in life.  3 years later and paying the bear minimum on all these bills I have now.  I just can’t physically do it.  I have to live off of friends couches, ask my guy friends to please take me out for food and I have been wearing the same clothing from high school.  Some have holes by now…but I just want to get out of this debt and put every single penny towards it so I won’t feel this guilt in me.  In the past 3 years I have paid it down to $8,500.  but it would take me even more years to pay even that off.  I am just sick of paying for a mistake in my past.  Please…I am asking anyone…even if it is a dollar…a dollar will help.  Trust me, even a penny counts in my case.  I just don’t want to feel my guilt of my past.