I have never blogged before... and to be honest it never really interested me, until lately that is. Life has a funny way of being overly complicated, and I have found that all the other methods I have attempted to use to relieve myself of stress and depression have failed to work, so I decided to give this a shot instead. I guess this first post will have to be mostly background information for anything else to make sense... so here goes.
Ben and I purchased our home in January of 2007. We were both working full time and although we had two vehicle loans and a mortgage to pay we found we were doing ok. In October of last year Ben suddenly lost his job and was unable to find work, so since I was the only one working I started pulling INSANE hours of overtime to cover the income loss. Eventually he was able to bring in some money by advertising handyman work online, but it wasn’t enough. Just after Christmas our truck was repossessed by the bank. We were devastated when we received a letter from them only a few days afterwards saying they were going to auction it off, but that we would be responsible for any remaining loan balances… because we knew we were VERY upside down in the loan as it was and there would be a balance remaining.
Realizing we didn’t have another choice, we filed a chapter 7 bankruptcy earlier this spring. The day the courts finalized the paperwork we felt a good size burden being removed from us and thought for sure that now we would be ok, but as the months passed we realized it was far from ok. I was still the only one working, and I HATED my job more than anything in the world. I would cry every morning and have to force myself to go. I found myself on several medications for anxiety, insomnia, migraines, and worst of all depression. My husband worried about my well being every day and did all he could to fix our situation, and when the handyman work started booming he told me he wanted me to quit and focus on me and my health instead of that horrible job. I was SO relieved I was a different person almost that instant.
The work was steady and enough that we couldn’t keep up with the demand, so we figured we were out of the slums. I closed my 401k and used the money to catch up on bills that remained unpaid. Ben LOVED being his own boss, and I LOVED being able to work at his side or just stay at home, and it felt like for once things were going right. All of the sudden though, the calls stopped coming in, and the work came to a dead halt. I then realized I wouldn’t be able to stay at home and focus on me and my health and started filling out application after application. I filled out at least five a day and got angry when I heard nothing back on even one. Ben too would go out searching and searching for work and come back with his head hung low depressed he couldn’t find anything to support us.
Finally last week Ben got hired at a job he started Monday. We were so relieved he had found work after all this time, and I too had a great job potential I was waiting to hear back from. He came home exhausted and sore, but grateful to have the job! We were so happy… until I got the mail yesterday. As I sorted thru the various letters and ads I came across one from out mortgage company and knew it couldn’t be good. I opened it and cried as I read the words… “pre-foreclosure”. And then, more bad news from the car loan… a threat of repossession. I couldn’t help but sob out loud as I read them both, because I knew even though Ben was working full time he wouldn’t be paid for at least two weeks, and the check wouldn’t be large enough to cover them both.
I found myself daydreaming and wishing I could win the lottery or a large sum of money on a gameshow like I watched others on tv do, but when reality kicked in I realized that would never happen to me. Now I sit wracking my brain to find a solution, a way out… but every thought process and idea I have leads to the same conclusion… it cannot be done. We have nothing we can sell, no credit due to the bankruptcy that we can use for loans or lines of credit, and our friends and family either cannot or will not help either, so we are up a creek without a paddle ALONE. We have no money for food and nowhere else to go, and since we have no credit and no money we cannot find anywhere else to go. We are about to lose EVERYTHING we have and can’t do anything about it.
One step forward… two steps back….
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