What in the World is Going On?

AKA - our housing debacle. I'll try for the short version. Last year after a couple of years of fighting with and trying to work with Bank of America to modify our mortgage - or whatever they were calling it at the moment - we lost our home to foreclosure. Or we chose to walk away. Or some combination of the two. There was a lot of number crunching and heartache and frustration at the way the system is set up. At the time I felt like a stupid loser. Sometimes I still do but having seen and heard more than a few similar Bank of America stories, mostly now I just feel pissed off at B of A. This is how we've seen it work. Homeowner is having trouble (loss of work, injury, etc.) & says to the bank "hey, how about one of those loan mods we've been hearing about?" Bank says "Sure, first you have to get behind on your payments. Then once the mod process starts, don't make any payments. Once approved it'll all be peachy. The government is helping all kinds of homeowners and we're working with the government." Also, you have to go through 1000 government hoops - call here, fill out this, do this online financial counseling thingie, fill this out, oh, wait did we mention - call here, fill this out...Are you sure you sent that to us? We have no record of that. Or that. Are you sure you called? Hmmmmm.

End of the story is - bank turns down your loan mod request and asks you for all of your missed payments plus about $20,000 (or more) in Bank Fees & Lawyer's Fees that were accruing while you weren't paying your payments. (which they told you not to pay. they actually sent ours back to us.)

Let me get this straight? You get the money I've been paying on the mortgage up until the loan mod request, you get the mortgage insurance that you have against loans that end badly, you get the government bail out AND you get my house? Oh, sweet. And now you get Warren Buffett to come in and rescue you, too. (Please insert cursing of all kinds here. I am thinking the words but trying to keep this rated PG.)

When we moved out of our home, we tried to look at the bright (very dim) side. We moved closer to where the kids were playing sports and their school. We moved in to a ward with more kids my kids' ages. We were going to have an adventure with sidewalks and being within walking distance to stuff. Little did we know at the time that B of A was just lingering out there getting ready to pounce on us again. The house we were renting was foreclosed on by B of A. While the owner was trying to modify the loan. A third party knocked on our door and told us that we would have to move. Super D Freaking Dooper.

We were given around 30 days to move. There is a lot of back story to why we have made the decision that we have made but here's what we're doing - we are moving some of our stuff to my parent's garage, some of it to the Baker's and the bulk of it (and us) to Anna's and Brad's house. We will hang there until the end of February giving us time to get the kids enrolled in home school programs and for Jake to go to his work comp dr's appointments and meet with his attorney. It will also give us time to make sure that Tanner is stable & on a good path. Then we are LEAVING. Yep, that's right. We are loading all 7 of us in to our minivan. Connecting a trailer with a bunch of our stuff and LEAVING. We are hitting all kinds of friends and family along the route of our Epic Road Trip. There will be lots of blogging and facebook and I might even tweet the story of our Epic Road Trip so stay tuned. We are taking a chance & having an adventure. I think it has something to do with being given lemons and making lemonade. Or we've just had enough and have completely lost our minds!

Our "D" Word

At some point over the last year a fellow blogging Mom-friend of mine blogged about having to say and write the D word out loud. To own it. In her world, the word was Divorce. In my world, the word is Depression. A recent difficult and heart wrenching time with one of my teenagers has impressed upon me even more strongly that this D word has to be something that we acknowledge. I thought I had been. I talk pretty openly about my own struggles & how much medication has helped me. Discussions of our grisly and tragic family history in regards to our antecedents that have clearly had similar struggles but without the benefit of modern medication have come out from under the proverbial rug. And most importantly I thought that I was watching my kids.
When I was in high school my friends and I read The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. For those who are unaware they are not high school romance novels about cute non-blood sucking vampires. There is a scene in one of the books where an event changed the mindset of the main character forever. It was a pivotal moment. He describes the after math of that event as something like "And the sky was never the same shade of blue again." (Insert rant here: I would quote it from my well worn, dog eared, highlighted copy but someone 'borrowed' it and never returned it. This particular theft took place 18 years ago and still pisses me off.)

It was as if the sky was never the same shade of blue again. I cannot tell you how that idea spoke to me. Looking back I know that I struggled with anxiety and depression. I know that my mind was cloudy and garbled by wacky synapses & chemical issues that passed to me through that giant genetic maze. Since I am not a crier when depressed, I boxed myself off, made the best decisions I could under the circumstances and really didn't understand why I always felt like a mysterious, horrendous black something was looming over me just waiting to get me. Now I understand that what it feels like when a medication takes away the anxiety thus removing the horrendous black something. I get less stomach aches. I ride escalators. I can ride in a car as a passenger without the need to feel like leaping out of a moving vehicle.

I didn't embrace medication until after I gave birth the second time. Of course my life was stressful and I was sleep deprived. 3 kids under 3 will do that to you but will it make you think repeatedly that going straight instead of turning around a curve would be a good idea? Going straight off of a cliff. I wondered so many times why no one around me could see what was going on but I guess I hide it well. The good news is that I was with it enough to drag myself to get help. I hope that my experience has allowed me to see the signs in others & get them to look at a word that we all want to avoid - Depression.

I personally wish there was another word. One that didn't have the ability to be misconstrued as mere sadness or despondency. A word that describes a definitive medical condition like diabetes or asthma. The counselor that we've worked with recently just shook her head when I started listing the family history. Thankful seems a very little word when I try to describe how I feel about the difference modern medicine can make to my life and now to one of my kids. It's scary when your mind is a dark, murky fog bank and sometimes medicine can return the shades of blue to the sky. The fact that a person has been in the murky fog bank means that the shades of blue won't be quite the same shade but blue is so much better than a thick, murky black.