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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent
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 Sunday, September 21, 2008
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—
When I was younger, my father used to often quote that first line of Dickens’s novel, The Tale of Two Cities. Although at the time, it frustrated him because of the straightforward man that he is, he wanted to know… “What was it? The best of times or the worse of times?”
I find this opening paragraph not only extremely fitting for where I am in my life today, but where our country stands as well. Curious. And I completely understand how life can be such opposing sides of the coin at once. The way I see it, the coin has been tossed, and we’re all waiting to see which side it lands. But for now we are all still spinning in the air.
Summer is coming to a close. The cycle of life is once again slowing down. And I realize that it’s been a long while since I’ve last written. I’ve held back for many reasons; lack of time, lack of energy, lack of enthusiasm to share what’s exactly going on in our little edge of the world. And as the months pass and I feel this need to communicate with those who do care and read this, I wonder where even to begin because with so much time passing, so incredibly much has transpired and changed. Where do you start? It all seems so frivolously important.
And so I look at the big picture and what’s happening in our country. How can you not? It overwhelms every newspaper, conversation, headline, front lawn even. But you see, I start here with my own personal update because we have finally become another statistic, adding to the melting pot which seemingly is indeed melting; something John and I were both trying so desperately NOT to become a part of. We were hoping and praying to somehow turn our backs to inspire something different. Change. A new direction…
So that game of chess… The one that I was playing a few months back. The game ended, and I believe that I lost. What do I expect when I’ve not yet won a game. And that game of chess was played in the midst of this housing market and banking game that’s still continuing with so many Americans today. This entire story is too long to even begin to explain, but the nice, short and sweet version is that I spent over three months trying to save our two houses and our entire financial situation. Holding onto the two houses put us in an extremely uncomfortable situation, and we are finally choosing to let one go… thankfully to the old one.
Let me again step up and take responsibility for my own path of “our choices” while stressing the words “to choose.” We chose to buy a new house before selling the old. We chose the house with the trail of numbers that followed. Yes, we were influenced and encouraged by optimistic people, but in the end… we were the ones who signed our names on the dotted line.
And now we are joining this second wave of homeowners who are in the process of losing their homes and having trouble refinancing as well. A second wave that is expected to be twice as large as the first. Faced with the repercussions and effects of the first wave that were all trying to capitalize on a good thing. (How dare they? What is this America?!?) A wave of people who have decent incomes, good credit. A wave that includes people like us.
I didn’t want to write about this while it was happening, mainly because I was so involved with contacting banks, lenders, mortgage companies… reading about laws passed, reading about what I could possibly do to save our situation that I didn’t have the time to think about writing about it. I was in it, drowning. I didn’t write because of the level of stress, and frankly… I’m tired of writing about the shit that seems to be engulfing our lives. But there was also this new thing that surfaced; an unfamiliar old friend called “shame.” I felt shame and embarrassment… something I haven’t felt in a loooong while. I felt shame you see, because I felt as though I had somehow failed.
Here we were, two young thirty something’s who moved into this great community who owned all together over a million dollars worth of real estate. (Let me rephrase… had over a million in debt.) We brought in decent money. We found an incredible family to rent our house that wouldn’t sell, and I broke rule number one and fell in love with them. We had this beautiful new house where we were starting this supposed amazing new life… We could only go up from here, right? Well…
At some point down the road we weren’t sure if we would be able to hold onto everything. Or rather weren’t certain how long we could. And believe me, we were holding on pretty tight. We held faith, and believed in the inevitable fate of change; not knowing which way the wind would blow. During the past year and a half I have constantly been sitting on the edge with the possibilities of loosing our house, our home. “When are we going to loose our house? Is it today?” was the question as I woke up in the morning and “Will it be tomorrow?” was the one that came with me to bed at night. This beautiful home of ours that we’ve created with love. And the stress of that constantly rest heavy on my heart.
We bought a new house and within five months the entire housing market turned for the worse. That day in July when I went to talk to our mortgage broker will stay with me forever.
“Have you been watch CNN!?!” he yelled at me. “Everything’s changed! Everything’s different.”
He was freaking the fuck out.
If our other house had sold in the three months that we were told it would… we’d be fine. We’d be ahead…
“If’s” are never a reality.
“If’s” are a waste of my time.
A year and a half passes. I do the inevitable and confront our renters, which was the most dreaded moment of what I had to experience. As one out of a million as we have come to term, “rental home leasers,” I felt that it was my responsibility to provide a consistent stable home to our tenants. Something that I took VERY seriously. Something that again I felt as though I failed to do.
“You have to let them go.” A wise voice said to me. “You were there for what they needed then and when they needed it. You don’t know what’s ahead of them, and you have no right to hold on to them any longer.”
I listened.
So at some point during the past summer, I had to let go. I let go of my ego, my pride. I let go of the image of who I thought I was, and what I had created myself to be. I let go because I knew that I had worked so damned hard and was only met with every brick wall coming at me landing just two inches from my face at every angle I tried to turn. And this was after every attempt with the other side telling me that they promise that they could solve ALLLLLL of our problems. The first person told us that we could refinance paying off all of our debts and still have a stash sitting in the bank. …If the appraisal came back as good as we all thought. (And thank you for all of your wishes and positive thoughts on that one.)
It came back bad. Really bad. But amazingly enough we had three different appraises of sorts over the three plus months from different sources, each ranging a hundred thousand dollars apart. Not thousand… I’m, talking number zero zero comma zero times three. So truly, what do you believe? When you’re numbers are hundreds of thousands of dollars off… But the next time something else wasn’t right and the next something else. But each time the thing that didn’t work out before worked and something else was brought to attention. If they could all just get together and put the good pieces together. Duct tape is very good for such occasions. A little messy yes, but pretty solid.
At one point, I even let go of this house of ours. John and I accepted selling this house and were newly excited to buy another more close in until we realized that a.) our realtor said that he wouldn’t be able to sell our house right now due to the market and b.) the mortgage and a storage unit would equal or be a meager hundred dollars less for a house half the size of our current one. Crazy, huh?
Believe me, over three months… I looked into EVERY option.
And as a side note… all of the letters and nonsense sent out saying, “We can help.” “We’re ready to talk now.” It’s all a lie. The news in the papers stating that the government has passed so and so is just a ploy to appear as though they’re actually doing something, working REAL HARD to help us all out of this mess. “Help the little people! Remember us!!!” Let me just remind you… this is an election year.
Frankly, it was a crazy, amazing, unbelievable experience. Astounding. Shocking at times. Exhausting to say the least. But during the process I once again, become so much stronger, more solid and stretched beyond any extreme yoga session imaginable. I learned a lot. Not only about what’s happening in our world, but I learned about myself. I learned that I’m a fighter. But at times… even a fighter needs to put down her weapons and move on.
“Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away, and move on to something that's more productive.”
Donald Trump
So sometime in August we just let go. We let go of everything. We let go and stopped focusing on our situation and started focusing on our new business and ourselves. Strangely enough, things started actually moving in those areas. Forward. Which felt dizzying after going backwards so fast and strong for so long. And somewhere along this forward path, we both found peace. I actually found a peace that I’ve never quite felt before.
A peace that told me, “You don’t know what’s on the other side of this.”
Let go.
A peace that told me, “See, things are getting better for you. Can you feel it?”
And it’s crazy, because in the midst of such horror, I am starting to live this life that I truly want and love. I see that I am changing… once again evolving into something different.
I revisit in my mind these words that I’ve been reading this past year. Words of wisdom about being in the moment, about moving forward, and also about failure. And how everyone who has ever been successful has fallen at least once. Many fall several times over.
"Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly."
John F. Kennedy
“If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative."
Woody Allen
"Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness."
Oprah Winfrey
The other day I was sitting in my room at my desk, and I realized that for the first time in this past year and a half year, that I’m finally home. That THIS IS in fact my home, and that no one is going to take that away from me. I realized that I had let go of loosing it. That I in fact TRIED to lose it, and for whatever reason… it wouldn’t lose me.
I realized that I had not failed. That this was just a momentary set back. That if the loans had gone through, that THAT would have been the actual failure, and we would have been in a larger hole that we may not have been able to get out of. And that today we are in a place where we can actually begin to move forward.
I realized that what we live today isn’t revealed to us until tomorrow, and the things that appear as bad or catastrophic may actually put you in the exact place where you need to be to also move forward.
I learned once again to let go and trust, that there is something larger that guides us if we allow it.
I realized that I’m right where I need to be.
I am truly at peace.
I am ready and excited to see the future, to see which side this coin actually lands. I said earlier that I believe that I’ve lost. But in reality… I can’t yet see whether I have lost or if in actuality… I’ve won.
"People fail forward to success."
Mary Kate Ash
And I say to you, things are not always as though they seem.
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