There comes a point in every guy's life, gay or straight, where they go broke... with a broken heart.
They fall in love and move in with their significant others and spend time together going on trips or visiting each other's family or just staying in ordering Thai food from a joint down the street. Months or years go by and, well, if you're straight you get to take the plunge... marriage.(Us gays are still trying to figure it out).
But if it fails... well, then what?
For the first time in my life I owe the IRS $2,000. After picking up my jaw from off the ground and hanging up with my accountant and even wiping some exasperated tears off my face, I started to think about how I had gotten in to this mess. Sure. Being a freelancer means taking responsibility with your money and setting aside some cash for moments like these. But when, in five months, a boy has to pack up his things from an apartment he spent with his boyfriend with very low rent then move in to a new apartment with a down-payment and furniture and a whole new lifestyle to adjust to... things happen. Savings get smaller. Credit cards get a bit higher. Life changes and so does your financial status.
Which brings me to the Tax Ex-Off. You know, writing off the "Ex" relationship.
When you are married you get certain write-offs single people do not get offered. Sure it might not seem like a big deal when you don't know about them, but when I got off the phone with a good friend that just recently tied the knot and discovered the return they were getting back just because they were married,I got a little ticked off.
What about the people who have to write off their broken hearts or their failed relationships?
Think about it. Why doesn't the government get the picture of how hard it is to think you are going to be with someone the rest of your life and POOF ... now you're not. And then you have to heal. You know, the pizza's your consume to fill the empty sad void you usually get when you are depressed in a break-up. The ice cream and the cookies and let's not forget the booze... oh my God the wine bottles you could write off.
How about the moving costs? How about the tissues and the sheets for your bed, you know, the comfortable ones you buy because you spend a lot of time mourning the end of your long-term relationship in it? What about the gym membership you get to lose the weight of all the depressed eating? What about the bad dates you take to try to forget about the break-up? The dinners you pay for because the other one insists on going "Dutch" and because you are a little more classy you offer to pay? What about the cab drives you take back home to hide from the bad date? What about the therapy you need to not carry past relationship baggage?
In the end, life's choices are expensive and it seems like the mistakes we make cost the most. Even if those mistakes could be the smartest mistakes you make, they cost more than doing something that seems to be so easy for people to do-- get married and sign on a dotted line together.
So I will pay my money back to the IRS. But when I sign off the check, I will put in the memo: The Break-Up. So some random IRS person who doesn't know me and doesn't give a shit about me will at least know that this money they are getting isn't just some business guy who tried to rip off his previous year's return or some waiter that got caught stuffing his pocket instead of claiming his tips.
This money they are getting is four years of learning lessons and four years of smiles and four years that accidentally led to failure and not marriage and not more tax write-offs, but to more debt. A different type of debt that gets added to your already broke-n heart.
