Our Home...well, the home that used to be ours.
I'm an emotional mess right now...probably not fit to write this post. It rambles, is angry, is weepy, and maybe doesn't make much sense, but I needed to write it all out. For me. I am aware that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are still unemployed in the United States and of those, many have already lost their homes and haven't found a new job yet. I don't want to minimize their suffering. They have their own stories and this is ours.
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I remember when I wrote this post more than three years ago. We were just hours away from closing on our first home. Well, the first house that Gareth and I purchased together here in the states. Gareth had already been a homeowner in the UK for several years. However, here we were, taking a huge leap and moving forward with our lives and setting down roots. I was so nervous and excited that I broke out in hives.I had heard horror stories about people getting to the closing meeting and things going south. I was nervous about there being a hiccup, but there wasn't. We couldn't have asked for a smoother closing.
If I could have foreseen all the ugliness that would have happened once we'd moved in, I'd have shot out of that closing meeting like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, before signing single piece of paper. But see, that's the problem, I'm selfish and wasn't willing to wait until something else (we'd originally made an offer on a home in Cape Elizabeth, where we truly wanted to live, but a week after our offer was accepted and the home inspection had been performed, the boiler blew up causing thousands of dollars worth of damage - some of which was being repaired and some not. So we backed out of the deal.), in our price range came on the market down there. We decided to broaden our search range and found a huge home on almost an acre in the mid-coast area of Maine which was considerably less expensive than anything in Cape Elizabeth.
I envisioned having huge BBQ's and holiday parties, just like the ones we'd hosted in Cape Elizabeth. I could see Gaby playing with a Newfie that we'd been on the waiting list (through the rescue organization), for, out in the huge, fenced-in back yard. We talked about updating the kitchen - installing granite counters, new plumbing hardware, new floors, repainting the entire home and truly making it ours. It wasn't in our ideal location, but it was within our budget and we had huge plans for it.
We said goodbye to our neighbors in Cape Elizabeth, some of whom had become like family to us, then moved into our new home. It was pretty apparent from the get-go that our new neighborhood was not into social gatherings and were, for the most part, just people living in houses, going about their daily lives...never really connecting with their neighbors. "No worries!" I thought to myself, because it wasn't long after moving in that Meg decided she wanted to live with us. She moved in with us in August of 2007 and it wasn't long after the first day of school that our home was always filled with hordes of teenagers calling me "mom", "mama" and occasionally, "MOTHER!"
Halloween 2007
Then Zach, my youngest son, decided he wanted to try living with us again (he had originally moved in with us in February of '07 but it didn't work out.), and he moved back to Maine and in with us. The house was now really and truly filled with kids and I could not have been happier. That first Thanksgiving with Meg's [then] boyfriend, her best friend and her husband, Zach, Gareth, Gaby and me, was...wonderful!
Christmas came and went, we rang in 2008 and that's when things started to fall apart. With two additional mouths to feed (for which I was not receiving child support!), bodies to clothe, raging hot water and utility bills to pay for, we decided I'd go back to work to help make ends meet a bit easier than they had been. It was one of the worst decisions of my entire life.
Had I known that returning to work would lead to me falling and breaking my tailbone in several places and would also precipitate The Very Bad Thing, I would have figured out another way to bring in added income. But you know what they say, "Hindsight is 20/20."
It was a mere month after The Very Bad Thing happened that we experience a crisis of horrifying proportions with Zach. After that things just went to hell in a hand-basket at warped speed, financially. My emotional and physical state deteriorated rapidly and at times became dangerously precarious. Dealing with the fallout after Zach's crisis didn't help.
All of that became our year from hell. Mounting medical bills, child care costs, legal fees from issues surrounding Zach and the rest of my older kids were starting to bury us. We still made the mortgage payment though...despite the weight of the payment crushing us, we wrote that check every month.
We hadn't even been in the house for six months when all of the crap hit the proverbial fan. So there was no use going to the lender (who, at that point we weren't even sure of because the loan had been sold so many times in such a short time. As a matter of fact, it was sold for the first time, the day after we closed! I want to point out, we were not a sub-prime loan!) to ask for help. We had what was considered a decent rate and there would not have been anything we could have done.
Somehow we survived that year and all the fresh misery it brought with it. There were times I didn't think I'd see the light of the next day, but together, we pulled through. The litigation surrounding The Very Bad Thing was over and we could take a deep breath. I still wasn't out of my own personal abyss, but not having to deal with TVBT (I'll always deal with it, on an emotional level, to some degree, for the rest of the my life. I wish I'd realized that then.), but knew that eventually the light at the end of the tunnel would change from a pin-prick to something brighter and much greater.
In December of '08 Meg and her friends decided to help cheer me up by repainting the kitchen for me. I'd already been through FOUR other colors and was about to give up when I found a sage- green I liked. I just never had the energy to do it myself. So Meg took charge! Looking back, that was probably a mistake. A fun, and very messy one (OMG, it takes forever to get paint out of hair!!!), but a mistake nonetheless!
By the end of that evening, even the counter tops had paint on them, as well as our hair, clothing, eyelashes and eyebrows. Despite the amateur paint job, I will always look back on that night and smile. I laughed for the first time in more than a year on that night!
Fast forward to the Autumn of '09; Meg is getting ready to leave for BMT with the United Stated Air Force, I'm still in outpatient treatment twice a week but slowly recovering...I'm taking better care of myself and am trying to get my Bulimia under control. Gareth's company is going through a round of layoffs but as far as he knew, his job was safe...well as safe as could be in the rapidly sinking economy.
We were still struggling to pay for medical bills and every single month it was always a question of medical bills vs. the mortgage payment. We reached out to our lender and they refused to help us saying we didn't qualify for any program they had and they referred us to the new program that President Obama's administration had set up called, "Making Home Affordable." For everyone but us that is.
We either made too much money to qualify or had too many bills. Either way, we were screwed. The folks at MHA referred us to a financial counselor who pretty much told us that we were looking at foreclosure or bankruptcy at this point.
The economy continued it's rapid descent and we put one foot in front of the other until October 30th of 2009...just four days before Meg left for BMT, when Gareth received word that he was being laid off. We immediately called our lender to let them know and all they said was, "OK, we'll make a note of it." That was that.
When Gareth found a new position with a company here in New York, we phoned the lender again and were once again told, "OK, we'll make a note of it." We'd been here about a week when we received notice that the lender was going to accelerate the loan and may opt to place the property into foreclosure. We didn't get anything else from them after that except a monthly mortgage statement. Of course, we hadn't been paying the mortgage since October of 2009.
We didn't hear anything else from them until April of 2010 when they sent us a modification offer that infuriated us. Where was this offer when we were begging them for help all through the summer and autumn of 2009? Of course there was no way, living here and leasing this home and dealing with the high cost of living in New York, that we could swing that mortgage payment and the rent here. There was, and still isn't, any work for Gareth back in Maine. Not yet anyhow. We were insulted, angry and simply couldn't believe that it took them so long to put together a modification, and why, when we were told repeatedly that we didn't qualify for anything back then, not even MHA...why, all of a sudden were they willing to modify the loan?
We've called the lender two or three times a month since receiving that modification, trying to figure out exactly what the status of the home is, if it was actively in foreclosure, and how long do we have to get everything in the house, out? Our phone calls were always notated in our account, but no one could, or would give us an answer...until this evening when the phone rang.
We're out of time.
It's taken this long to find out that the house has been in foreclosure since December 22, 2009 (we weren't even 90 days past-due at that point, but I suppose it doesn't matter), and that a certain amount of time has elapsed - given Maine laws, and it's now scheduled for sale.
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I burst into tears while I was on the phone with the representative from our lender. Never once, in dealing with them had I ever become emotional on the phone, until tonight. It all just hit me like a ton of bricks. Several times throughout the conversation the representative had to pause because I was literally sobbing so hard that I couldn't hear her. Gareth came over to me and put his hands on my shoulders and whispered into my ear, "It's OK, everything is going to be alright. We will get through this. Everything is going to work out, I promise." Hearing those words just made me feel worse.
You see, this is all my fault. If I weren't obese and an emotional midget, this never would have happened. And if I weren't obese, I could get a job anywhere and help our situation. If I hadn't fallen apart like I did when TVBT happened, this never would have occurred. If I had been a better parent to Zach, been a present parent in his life, things that happened with him never would have happened.
Because of my inability to pick myself up after being knocked down, I've ruined Gareth's credit as well as the likelihood that we'll ever be able to buy another home.
There's going to come a day when Gaby will read this (my other kids already know, and remind me, of what a failure I am.) and come to see me as the failure I am...the one who has caused immense heartbreak over the years, and who continues to fail to get her life under control.
Who on earth is ever going to be inspired by a woman who let herself get so morbidly obese, bailed on her older kids, and then caused the financial ruin of her current family? Where do I get off thinking I'm ever going to be able to reach out to anyone else and offer them any hope, when I'm sitting here scared silly that I can't even offer that same hope to my own family...that things are going to be OK and that we'll get through this? I look back on my list of "45 by 45" and laugh a very bitter laugh. What right have I got wanting to donate money to anyone, or start a charitable scholarship fund, or take a family vacation; when I can't even manage to budget the money we do have, to cover upcoming expenses?
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The end result of tonight's phone call from our lender is that we're going to go through something called a "Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure" which just means that we sign back over the property to the bank and they don't foreclose. Because we have already been in the foreclosure process for so long, we still have very little time to get everything out of the house. I'm not sure we're going to be able to do that with expenses we have now, that need to be taken care of...registering our cars and repairing them so that we can pass the state inspection here in New York.
After I ended the call with the lender this evening, Gareth took a tissue and wiped my eyes and handed me another so that I could blow my nose. He once again spoke those words he whispered to me whilst I was on the phone..."It's OK, everything is going to be alright. We will get through this. Everything is going to work out, I promise."
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I hope I haven't offended anyone by writing this all out, and putting it "out there", especially someone who might be struggling just to put food in your children's mouths and are worried about whether you'll have a roof over your heads at the start of the next month. If I have offended you, I am sorry. My world, right now, seems a very scary place, but I am grateful for what we do have...and if I could, I'd try and help you make yours a better and more secure place too. Truth be told though? I'm probably the last person you'd want to help you make your life more secure. Just look at the mess that mine is...
