Burying the Dream

The house is officially on the market and when I saw the listing online tonight I broke down. Not externally because my in-laws and the boys were having dinner and we're in a small apartment, so there was nowhere I could do to just cry and cry. And it's so impossibly hard to keep your composure when you're just completely grief stricken inside!

It was devastating for me to read the description of the house and see the photos that K took yesterday and we selected last night. The grief is just too much to bear, really.

If the house just wasn't that beautiful...

If we hadn't spent so much money and effort into it to make it look that way...

If were not aware that after 8 years of home ownership (an integral part of the "American Dream") we are now back to square ONE, having lost all the money we had so far managed to make and ending up with the roughly 10K we started with back in 2001 (if all goes well with the sale).

Even knowing that this is NOTHING compared to other people's losses still hurts. And it hurts incredibly more because (and I was going to write another post about "The Roads Not Taken" or "Regrets" and maybe someday I will) K found out (quite by accident) last week that his group at Big Pharma hasn't been dismantled yet, so he could still be there, making enough money for us to keep the house. He hated the job, though, and it was (and wouldn't) taking him nowhere. Now, he's making less than half the money, but he feels rewarded, fulfilled, and hopeful for a nice tenure track position in the future. So, we are confident it's all for the best, but still, learning about this on the hardest moment -- the one in which you put the house you thought you'd live for many years in on the market -- is just indescribably hard and heart-breaking.

All this has been much harder on K, but it's taking its toll on me now that it's very palpable that there's no way out, and nothing can happen to make us keep the house. K says he feels detached from the house, that he wants closure, and I don't blame him.

On Friday, he spent most of the day spreading the huge pile of mulch that we had a landscaper friend dump onto the yard and as he did that (with a bucket no less, poor K!) he saw it as a fitting metaphor -- he was burying the house, burying the dream.

And here it ends. It all began on that fateful day back on October 31, 2007. I know it could have been worse and that we'll be OK, but it's no less painful.

May the dream rest in peace and others spring in its place. Sigh.