The House

We got word today: House in Old Home will close on Thursday. An ironic Christmas present?

Ironic? Yes. This is forcing me to confront (once again) all of my old ghosts from The Firm.

Simply put, this was not the way things were supposed to end. This house was emblematic of my new career and new started: the house (paid off by now, of course, due to superior planning), a successful fellow in my new field, well on my way to achieving financial independence.

Needless to say, things have taken a different path. As a point of comparison, our net worth now is less than it was 10 years ago.

I just feel...spent. Collapsed. Happy...Happy? Happy is not really the word. Not even relief, I suppose - just a weary sort of sense that it's done. At last. A tired end to a five year saga.

What happens now? I don't really know. I have been consistently shocked by the amount of damage my unemployed period did to our finances. I had thought that it was blip in our year; the reality is, we had redlined things so much that it will take us far longer than I had anticipated to dig ourselves back out.

Another house? I laugh to myself. I figure at this point, my credit is somewhere next to that of a change machine in a supermarket.

Which is an odd place to find myself again. It's as if the one thing that I have desired, stability, has been moved out of my life.

Or pride perhaps. Going through this process has been a humbling experience - although probably not humbling enough! You become dependent on so many things: the buyer, the bank, the kindness of so many that have helped this process go through.

I'm undecided if I'll go back to see the house one last time as we visit Old Home this Christmas. In so many ways, it represents a failure to me - not only a failure to hold the line, to provide, but a failure of dreams and aspirations.

And those are the hardest failures of all.