Default?!!? [State of Emergency]

K dropped that bomb-word* above in a phone conversation that we had less than two hours ago and... I don't know... my heart just stopped and I went speechless for several moments throughout the (long) conversation. I was on the verge of tears several times and I think I'm still comparably OK, calmly writing this post because of the adrenaline still running through my veins.

Apparently, life as we know it has ended abruptly.

I/ We/ Us/ Our Lives...

...everything is in a state of emergency right now.

Were we in denial before? Not exactly, but, well... perhaps.

Back in August when we decided not to put the house on the market (because the renovations had not been fully finished and K had to go back to work at the university) and just wait a little longer, we knew that around May money might run out, but we were hoping for several things that seemed "far away" in the future... that work for me would materialize, that we would have a clearer sense of what we should do as time went by and other things, but, mostly, that I'd have work that would help us make it. I had just started training for the [now defunct] online gig and soon after I started at the school. Life got really busy and we just kept on living it, as usual.

That was a mistake. Because we should have been in a state of emergency since he left Big Pharma. Not spending a penny on anything not strictly necessary, acting, working on finishing the possible (and inexpensive) renovations in every spare moment. But K's 3h daily commute and my busyness with my two "marginal jobs" made us feel somehow that we were living life as usual... Even the conversations that we had after my panic here were totally different from the one we had today (unfortunately on the phone). That's what shocked me so much. And made me ask K, incredulously, repeatedly, why oh why we were in such dumb denial all these wretched months?

Ignorance is bliss, but that also means that when you're face to face with an emergential situation, you just feel it's so unreal that, I don't know, how can you find the strength to go on? I know, adrenaline, the sense of urgency, the fear of the worse coming true.

And it doesn't make me feel any better that there are millions of other people in the same situation. Quite the contrary. We're just another casualty of this new depression. We're OK, actually, life hasn't even started for us so we don't have much to lose, for other more established people, it's the end of a long life of honest effort and toil, much more unfair. I know I shouldn't be complaining. But still, it's hard to live through it.

And I knew it all along, from that fateful day, October 31, 2007, the day K first lost his job that the problem was the house. The house that we bought partly because I wanted a bigger house (K didn't) -- SIGH.

I am numb. All the depression that I felt last week, crying on and off, feeling sad and hopeless seems almost silly now. I guess that's good. There's much to do and I need to be aware, wide awake. First and foremost, declutter and clean the house. Help paint. Look after immediate jobs. Try to stay calm. Try to shelter the boys somehow from too much anxiety.

Kelvin's birthday party is next Sunday, K says it's the last thing that we'll do from now on that has a "semblance" of normal life. Then it's full on emergency mode. Every waking moment devoted to dealing with "the problem(s)."

All possibilities are on the table. Sending me and the kids to live with my parents in Brazil for some time while K deals with the fall out if things go really wrong. Returning to Brazil for good if all fails -- something we had not really been considering, and other ideas. (One small good thing -- my credit may not be affected by this because the house is not in my name b/c I had no income back in 2007, not that I really do now... [insert sarcastic laugh here]).

But, hopefully, the house will be sold, we'll downsize, we'll find a cheap place to live and we'll trudge on. Hopefully the worse can be over by the summer so K can concentrate on his work at the lab, so he can be well prepared to send applications in the fall. Because he's our only hope of ever getting out of limbo and getting a life, settling somewhere.

We know we'll be OK, we do. It's all a matter of facing it, and we will.

I think it's so fitting that it's snowing hard right now. It feels right. The silent, stifling, white stuff falling and burying everything.

My apologies to you, my poor readers, those few who may have remained after this late negative turn in this blog. I had been thinking that this negativity must stop, that I should just suck it up and stop blogging about my sad feelings and sharing outrageus complaints such the fact that I'd been terribly spoiled by being able to be with my children for 7 years and now feel devastated that I need to leave them to go to work or something. How many women have to do just that only weeks after their babies are born? How do I even have the right to complain?

Anyway... my apologies, but I have to keep on blogging, especially now. I need the support so I don't feel so alone, so useless... I'm sorry. And, thank you.

* In case any readers don't know what going on default on a mortgage payment means, it means stopping to send the bank monthly mortgage payments because you don't make enough money and/or you anticipate that you won't be able to keep the house either because it won't sell or if what you owe the bank is less than what the house is worth now (not our case). Currently, we can pay the mortgage with K's salary, but we don't have anything left to fund all our other expenses. We are hoping to sell the house and not to have to default, but sometimes even the thought that one may have to end up defaulting in a few months can motivate someone to stop sending the payment because it is, in sum, a waste of money if you're going to end up losing the house anyway... yeah, I know, it's such a depressing scenario. Defaulting on a mortgage ruins one's credit and a foreclosure (having to give the house back to the bank) effectively destroys it for at least 7 years. So... it is a scary thing, but, as K was saying to me on the phone tonight -- it's happening to "everyone" nowadays... sigh.