Swimming in Jell-O

Walk-All-Over-Ya Mortgage Company (Wachovia to them) is the only thing standing between me and freedom from the burden of owning this big house. Last night I accepted an extremely low offer to purchase my home of 17 years; so low that it will not satisfy the debt I carry against it. Wachovia will need to accept the purchase price as a Short Sale in order for me to be debt-free.

In March 2009, when I was notified that my job as Marketing Director for a Sales Training and Consulting firm was ending because of the economy, I began what turned out to be the most frustrating run of negotiations with the bank one could ever imagine. My strategy was to start talking to them early, before I ran out of money and time.

After 14 months, three applications for loan modifications, each followed by denials for inexplicable reasons, the submission of four separate packages of identical documents after each round of failed applications, and countless fruitless phone calls ending with me slamming down the phone; I have found a qualified buyer who is neither able nor willing to pay the amount of money I need to erase my obligations. It is the only offer I have received in 14 months on the market.

Instead of feeling the relief I expected to feel after finally signing a contract, I am in a state of suspended animation, numb and listless. I feel as if I am swimming in a pool filled with Jell-O.

After sitting quietly, searching my soul, I realized what's going on. I have been sub-consciously hoping for a miracle, something or someone to swoop in and toss several hundred thousand dollars into my lap so that I could pay off the mortgage and live happily ever after in a house I cannot afford and which is too big for me to maintain. As long as I was able to stretch out the road to the inevitable, maybe my son would land that breakthrough role in a movie or TV pilot. Maybe a secret benefactor would emerge from nowhere and anonymously save the day, like in the old television series The Millionaire.

Today I am under no such delusions. I am entering, however reluctantly, a new passage. Tomorrow I will begin to look forward. I will accept, even embrace, the start of a new lifestyle. It will be free of property taxes, roof replacements, busted HVAC units, termite inspections, rotted siding and the need to keep updating the bathrooms and kitchen. I won't have to hire people to clean the house once a month or a guy to keep the yard and garden manicured. I might be able to take a few trips, see more of the USA, if not the world.

Without the relentless worry about things I cannot control, I will spend even more time appreciating what I have, and forget about things that I never needed in the first place.

For today, I will stay immersed in the Jell-O and let my sense of nothingness run its course. Tomorrow, I hit the road to a new, elusive peace.