My first Social Security check was $840.

I’d worked out the math a hundred times before I retired. Thirty-eight years at the same factory. $54,000 a year at my peak. I was supposed to get $2,100 a month. I planned my whole life around that number.

So when I saw $840 hit my account last January, I figured it was a mistake. A glitch. Maybe they process the first one differently.

I called the Social Security office the next morning. Sat on hold for two hours and eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock the entire time.

The woman who finally answered was polite. Professional. She pulled up my file and went quiet for about ten seconds. Then she said, “Your benefits were reduced due to an overpayment on a secondary claim filed under your Social Security number.”

I said, “What secondary claim?”

She said, “A disability claim. Filed in 2017.”

I have never filed a disability claim in my life. I’ve never even been on disability. I went to work every single day for 38 years. Broke my wrist in 2011 and still didn’t miss a shift.

She told me the total collected on that claim was $78,000. Seventy-eight thousand dollars. Under my number.

I asked where the claim was filed from. She said, “An address in Mobile, Alabama.”

I’ve never been to Alabama. Not once. Not even passing through.

Then she said something that made me grip the edge of my kitchen counter so hard my knuckles hurt. “The claimant listed you as their spouse.”

I’m not married. I’ve been divorced since 2009.

My ex-husband, Gerald. We split after 16 years. It wasn’t some dramatic thing. He just became a different person after his mom died.

Drank more. Worked less. I got tired. He got mean. We called it.

I hadn’t spoken to Gerald in probably four years at that point. Maybe five. He moved down south after the divorce. I didn’t keep track of where exactly.

I didn’t want to think what I was already thinking. So I told myself it was identity theft. Some stranger. It happens.

I requested the full claim file from Social Security. Cost me $35 and took six weeks to arrive.

Six weeks of checking my mailbox every single day. Six weeks of doing the math over and over. $78,000. That’s years of my retirement. That’s my paid-off property taxes. That’s my prescriptions. That’s my groceries for the next five years.

I didn’t sleep well those six weeks. I’d wake up at 3 a.m. and just lie there doing math in the dark.

The envelope came on a Thursday. Brown. Government-sized. I sat at my kitchen table and didn’t open it for about twenty minutes. I just kept running my thumb along the seal.

I don’t know why I was scared. I think part of me already knew.