Hi everyone. I will try to keep this concise. Hopefully, this will make sense.

I was going to school 7 years ago when I decided to take a "break." I used student loans during that period.

For the most part, I paid on my student loans until the months before and after COVID. This is not something I'm proud of. When COVID hit and they put everything in pandemic forebearance, I was behind.

I would like to go back to school and finish, but I will have to take out more student loans (I will not qualify for financial aid as my husband's income is too high to qualify... Yes I should have asked him to help me with the student loans, but I did not want to put extra on him... please do not judge...)

So, I have checked my loan provider website and it says I do NOT owe anything as of right now and that I am in pandemic forebearance... It does not say I have a past due amount either.

Does this mean I can qualify for student loans now? Or is it it somewhere flagged I was behind? Do I need to pay it up?

I called to ask the financial aid office at my school, and before they would even talk to me, they told me to fill out a FAFSA (understandable).

Any insight, perspective would be so much appreciated.

NOTE: I will not be upset if I do not qualify for student loans. I understand that I screwed up and should have been paying them faithfully. And if I have to pay them up in some way then I don't mind doing that. Like, I get this is all on me and if I do somehow qualify for student loans, I am going to be super duper grateful.