This has been a really hard month.
Your dad and I are dreamers. We have had dreams since we were 17 years old. They were to buy a beautiful house and build a life filled with babies, cozy blankets and laughing. We bought our current house 5 years ago. We were 22 and 23 and it was at the height of the real estate bubble (I am not even sure what they will call this time when you are older, maybe the time all the people went crazy in the head I guess). Our house is lovely. Two bedrooms, hardwoods floors, two brand new bathrooms, a new dining nook and covered porch (all the work done by your proud papa- it was not very nice when we bought it). But we don't love this area. In fact, we pretty much hate it. We bought here because it was where we could afford. We thought the crime would get better, the schools would improve, the ruins that are the local neighborhoods would somehow be filled with prideful owners who would restore them to craftsman glory.
None of that happened.
Our house got nicer and nicer with all the work we put in and this town has crumbled around us. We have had two police chases end in our yard. This year we have had a serial killer AND a cop killer. The schools are worse. This is no place to raise two sweet baby girls.
But we owe more on this house than it is worth. Meaning to sell, we will have to pay the bank (which we will do with our money we were saving for a new house + help from my parents to avoid shortsale or foreclosure). This house has been a 5 year project, a refuge in a broken town. But It feels as though all our work has been for naught. That our pride is silly and at the end of the day, a waste.
We have built memories here. Elle, this carpet is where you dug your toes in to take those first wobbly steps. That chair in the corner is where I rocked a sleeping, tiny Brynn into the wee hours of the day, watching the pink sun rise against the cloudless sky. This porch is where your father and I, just married, toasted our good, lucky life.
No matter what, now is the time to go. We are going to sell. And we are going to pay. But it is worth it to feel safe again. Still, hearing the price of what our little cottage is now worth, caused us both to grieve a bit. Grieve for dreams we have to put on hold, for a life imagined that is now a life slamming hard into the realities of a bad economy.
A few days after this news, I was driving too the gym. Our state cannot yet decide what season it wants to be in. I was on the freeway going 60mph and my car suddenly began to slide in a random freezing rain storm. I pride myself on knowing how to drive in the snow and ice. I have been driving up to the mountains since I was 16 but never had I experienced such a complete lack of control. My car slide sideways and slammed into the center median at 55pmh and bounced me 180 degrees until I was facing backwards on the freeway. There were 5 other accidents all around me, one guy flipping his car completely over in the ditch. I sat with shaking hands thanking the universe that the girls were not in the car.
Our car was totaled in the accident but we are choosing to get it fixed since we paid it off two months ago. I remember coming home and folding myself into a small ball in the corner of the bathroom, feeling like everything was slipping out of our hands. We have tried so hard to do it right. To be responsible. To be adults. But this month I feel like a child, wanting someone to wrap me into their arms and tell me that we will somehow find a way out.
Of course because these things happen in threes, your dad's truck broke down 4 days later. We both just kind of walked around with our mouths hanging open.
But this all really comes down to money and not having enough of it to do all the things we want to do. And as far as problems to have, it is by far not the worst kind of problem to have. So we will make it through. We will buy our dream house one day and in that house we will continue dreaming. But for now, we both feel beat.
Thankful for our sweet babies:
