I am very lost :/

So, I have been reading this subreddit and news articles and I just can't make sense of anything.

I have almost $60k of grad school debt that I am just now about to need to start paying. I was enrolled in the SAVE plan but was given advice to switch to IDR because of all the SAVE drama (I also do not understand all of this). Well, my first payment is due in a few days, I definitely don't have the money for it.

My initial thought was to ignore it and give them the middle finger, but I see a lot of you saying that they can garnish your wages in the future so I definitely do not want to do that. Can I pay *some* of it and they will leave me alone? Or should I try to apply for forbearance? Is there something else I'm not seeing?

I don't see myself ever paying it off, so that's not my goal here...my goal here is to just keep them from bothering me, keep my credit score ok if at all possible.

Thanks in advance <3