Coming Out

Foreclosure isn't something that just happens, it creeps up on you slowly, maliciously, an insidious pest that chews at your nervous system. It chews at your fundamental fears and pokes holes in all that you hold dear. It's nemeses is hope. It's companion denial.

See, as Americans we were indoctrinated with a dream, a dream that began way back in toddler-hood. We were indoctrinated with an image of a happy home life, even if we didn't have one, which a lot of us didn't, but the dream still existed. It hung out on TV shows and the commercials that happened in between the shows and it crept in. So even when the reality didn't match what was going on around us or inside of us we had something to aspire to. We had something to work for. The house, the car, the dog, the yard, the white picket fence and the handsome partner to hang on our arm. And from this image we would sprout offspring who would be indoctrinated with the same dreams the same aspirations and the same goals. The catch here is that in order to obtain the dream we also would have to make a trade off, that trade off is what I call the 9 to 5'er. If you want the dream you have to trade your life energy for it. This all seems to make a lot of sense in a fair and just world. If you want something you have to do something to get it. And until recently I was living the dream. I was part of the collective consciousness of America and I believed in it. I believed in having all the stuff, making tons of money and retiring at leisure, except there was one or maybe a few fatal flaws in my thinking. The first was that the money I was making would always be paid to me on time and in full. The second was the work would always be available to me. As such I failed to plan. I was an over consumer with nothing more on my mind than love and relationships and happy endings and then before I knew it the bottom dropped out, but it happened slow. so slow that when I realized how deep it was there was a woman knocking on my door telling me that she was going to turn off my electric. Where's the dream in that? If I wrote her a check I knew it would bounce, but if I didn't my lights would get turned off. Daddy always told me to buy stock in Central Hudson.

It was that slap in the face day that woke me up to the reality of my particular situation and the days that followed weren't much better. Next came the car repo man and the collection calls and the dream turned into a nightmare from which I could not escape. This is not my beautiful life!

So you must be wondering how in the hell I got myself in so deep I didn't even know my electric was about to be terminated. The 2 words are hope and denial. Hope that a check would come to my door before the electric gestapo . Hope that I could juggle bills for another month before some one else came-a-knocking, but denial is the important word that I could never wrap my brain. my self talk reeked with it, "It will get better, it will get better." "They will pay me." "Work will pick up", and so on and so forth for months. It's hard to believe that people who owe you money won't pay it even if they know it means you will lose your house and your car and everything you've worked for, but believe it and have some kind of back up plan. I, for one, never did. At first I was pissed at myself for that, but I'm just not anymore.

I spoke to someone about my particular dilema several months prior and she asked me an odd question, a question which at the time didn't make sense. She asked me why I bought a house in the first place. I thought, "what a stupid question?" I answered because I've always wanted one, because I needed a place to live, because it was gifted to me from the universe. I mean really WTF? Then she said, "You thought you could buy security didn't you? But nothing is ever secure, nothing is ever permanent and basically the only constant is change." I didn't even want to hear that. Why do things have to change? why can't I live happily ever after in my little brick house with my dog and my shiny car in the driveway. I thought I was set, but the universe has a way of rearranging things just when you get comfortable. But was I really comfortable? Was I really happy working to pay my bills with a stinking quality of life that hadn't changed in years?

Are you happy with your life? Are you doing what you love and earning money doing it? Or are you always worried about what's got to be paid? Do thoughts of money occupy your mind more than 50% of the time? There is something wrong with that, I think and I feel like there is a way out of it, but that will come later....

So why am I the lone person on the internet openly discussing my foreclosure when millions of people are losing their homes? Well, there are some people openly asking for help or donations or whatever, this is not my purpose. See the thing is there is basically one school of thought on the whole bankruptcy, foreclosure topic. And it's this, if you have or are in either you should be ashamed of yourself, embarrassed and speak about it in whispers to your closest friends, all others are on a need to know basis and if anybody asks why you moved just make something up.

To that I say, nothing good or valuable has ever come out of shame and it never will. So I decided to come out of the closet. If your reading this and you want to come out of the closet too, have at it. Share your story here or elsewhere and maybe together we can create a new dream where the money comes from doing what we love and in a place where we embrace change as a constant and stop clinging to the illusion stability is real. I'm letting go of all my stuff can you?