Little Voice

When I was a toddler, I decided I was going to wear only skirts and dresses. No shorts. No pants. I don't remember this, but my mom has been flogging this story to death for years. She tells me that I made this decision right after she bought me a bunch of cute shorts outfits and that when she tried to force me into them, I turned into the octopus child (early warning signs?). While she was jamming me into the shirt, I was divesting myself of the shorts. I didn't put on a pair of pants or shorts until I was in first grade and I wanted the freedom to do flips on the playground equipment.

Obviously, I didn't have a problem saying "no" back then. How did I forget that critical life skill?

I'm going away this weekend, so I was checking my bank account. I scanned through the list of recent debits and credits and noticed a sizable charge from my insurance company. It occurred to me that I had seen another sizable charge from them recently, and it didn't seem to me that I should be getting charged so much so frequently. When I had first seen the charge, I thought the insurance company started billing me for my life insurance all at once for the year instead of month by month. Then I noticed the usual life insurance charge in addition to this other, big charge, and I decided I needed to get to the bottom of it.

I emailed my insurance representative, but he didn't email me back in twenty minutes, so I started to freak out. (I understand that twenty minutes is an unbelievably short window of time to give someone to respond to an email inquiry, but I was just noticing that I had been charged over a thousand dollars for an expense I couldn't remember anything about.) I called the insurance company's main number and found out that these were charges for a disability and term life insurance policy I had signed up for. Lest I give the impression that my insurance representative is a thief, once the customer service person told me what it was, I remembered signing up for it. However, a lot has changed in my life since I signed up for these types of insurance a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago, I worked at an extremely high-paying job and had excellent health insurance. Now, I'm temping, working two jobs to make ends meet, and, while I have health insurance, it's not good. It will keep me from going bankrupt if I have to go to the hospital (a big plus), but the deductible and co-pays are so high that I don't want to go to the doctor for anything less than my leg hanging on by a thread. So, I opted to cancel these policies (and I'll get some money back on the whole life insurance policy because the policy has some value to it).

So, as I should have anticipated (were I not so proud of myself for resolving the issue and getting some money back) that my insurance representative was going to fly into a frenzy over this. He sent me an email and left me a voice mail to tell me that we need to discuss my options because canceling the policies is the worst option.

This situation is one of those "this bothers me now and in five years I won't even remember it happened" situations. It is, in fact, the epitome of such a situation. But right now, it's stressing me out. For some reason that I don't understand, I find it really hard to say to this person, who is essentially my employee, that I don't agree with his opinion and I'm going to do what I want to do. He's a nice guy, but he's a sales person, so of course he's going to pressure me into keeping these policies. And if I were still in the same position I was when I took out the policies, I'd agree with him, but I'm not. I don't know why I have so much trouble asserting myself that I can't even say to someone I don't care that much about: "Thanks for your thoughts, but I'm going to do what I want." Maybe if he was trying to force me into a pair of shorts, I would find my backbone more easily.