6 days November 4, 2009

The next 6 days may be the death of me. This time next week I’ll have closed on the house. Or not.  Both of these options make me nauseous.

If I don’t get the house, I’ll be nauseous for obvious reasons: I really love this house, it would be perfect for me and it would be difficult to find something like it at this price point. I would have to start looking all over again. I wouldn’t have a timeline for buying anything, but I’m 90% packed. Would I move somewhere much cheaper with a much shorter lease?  What do I do?

The other option, is closing on the house. Yay! I got the house! Great! Well? Essentially I’ve got  another mortgage in the duplex, I have to call movers and utilities and pay double utilities and find additional jobs and, and, and.  If you’ve read my posts you know that I’ve already started to thinking about (the inevitable?) foreclosure.

I can suck the joy out of any situation.

I just can’t imagine being happy. O.k. I know I know. A place can’t make you happy or unhappy. Happiness comes from within, be happy in the present moment yada yada yada, blah blah blah. But seriously, the toll for any happiness, any truly good fortune I would come across would surely be negated by some other bad fortune.  I believe that’s the way the world works. For me. Others can be happy. Others can have ridiculous fortune. Not me. If I won the lottery, I would immediately lose it all to some scam or something. If I fell in love, of course the man would be doomed to an early death.

Deep down I don’t think I deserve this house. I haven’t earned it. It’s too nice for me. I haven’t worked hard enough or long enough. Basically I’m not good enough. And truth be told this feeling is not really deep down. It’s right at the surface. It’s right on top. I can imagine myself in this house but I can’t imagine the universe not extracting some great payment for it, because I overreached, some immediate event, large or tiny, that would make every minute I’m in the house full with regret or anxiety or bitterness.

Still, I really want this house.

risking it all October 1, 2009

How do you know when to risk it all?

Or at least some of it? Last night, as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for the, oh I don’t know, 14th night in a row, I tried to apply some self help stuff to my current situation. My current situation is: I’ve found a house to buy, but I just started a fairly expensive lease on a house ( let’s call it an “apartment” for clarity’s sake). The ideal of course would be to get the apartment leased to some other sucker someone else, which is exactly what I’m trying to do. But to no avail. The leasing market seems to have collapsed and there’s a glut of overpriced product. So I’m faced with either pulling out of buying my dream house, or buying it and being up to about $15,000 in debt for rest of the lease which has 10 months left on it.

I knew I was taking a risk when I put the offer on the house.  And I would not be in this situation if the apartment had not been cleaned properly and painted and baby roaches hadn’t been crawling on my towel after a shower. I would not have looked.  I did not expect to want a house as badly as I seem to now.  Maybe it’s misplaced anger about the apartment and my desire to escape it that compels me to take this risk. But as I was thinking about how I could escape this apartment it occurred to me that I didn’t want to move anymore, that the weird little city of Austin was home.

I’ve been running away from home for 25 years, the idea of home more accurately. The idea of being stuck with rules and fears of doing anything that might bring any negative attention, which is everything by the way.  I was not beaten, I wasn’t abused. It just stifling.  And it was my goal to get out, and not live by those rules and fears.

So I’ve found the perfect house to buy in Austin, but I’m stuck in an apartment, with no renters in sight. These two things are driving me insane. Actually it’s not those things driving me insane. It’s me driving me insane. When I think about buying the house I assume, naturally, that the second I buy it, there will be another housing crash and it will be worth half as much as when I bought it. Or I think, logically, what if the neighborhood goes down and I have to barricade myself in my home because of the violence and lawlessness outside my door. How would I survive, alone. In my head it’s all very Mad Max, with gang members in mohawked plumage (Is there anything scarier than an angry person with a mohawk running toward you?  As soon as you see them, you have to know they’re used to making bad decisions). I could easily have thought of any inner city in decline in the Crack 80s, but no. The images my mind came up with are Mel Gibson raging across the Australian desert fighting off crazed survivors of the apocalypse.

Buying my (now) dream house is the smaller of the two fears. Getting the apartment leased is really the Big Fear. What happens if I don’t get it leased by the time I buy the house? I can’t afford the mortgage and the rent. What will happen? I imagine police coming to my new house to arrest me for breaking the lease, theft really, robbing my landlord of thousands of dollars; the once beautiful house falling almost immediately into disrepair because every extra cent I have is spent paying the rent; working multiple, low wage jobs to pay for the apartment years after I bought the still unfurnished house; and years, nay, decades later I still have credit card debt from this one lone, perhaps impulsive decision.

You can not top me when it comes to thinking the worst! I’m willing to bet money on that. It’s this constant turning over of ideas about the worst case scenario that drives me nuts, each repetition containing more ruin and humiliation. I’m aware of these thoughts, don’t get me wrong. I stop them. I breath. I even laugh at them because they’re so completely ridiculous. Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome. Seriously? For crying out loud Tina Turner was in that.

But then I come back to the choices I’m making and I start to question them. Why do I want this house? Why now? There will be other houses for sale in a year, maybe even a $8000 tax credit as well. Why can’t I just wait?

And here’s what I answer: For the first time in my life I want to call a place home. That’s groundbreaking. And on the last day of my 10 Day Option Period, that’s what’s making me go forward with buying my dream house.

home, finally September 15, 2009

25 days ago I moved into this house, a rental in the perfect location, lots of space and windows and hardwood floors, a place to practice. It was exactly what I wanted.

25 days later I’ve found a house I want to buy, nowhere near here, with smallish rooms but a righteous kitchen. It’s exactly what I didn’t know I wanted.

The house I’m in now is an old house with great bones, but I can’t make it mine. I kept thinking if I owned this place there’s so much I could do with it. I could turn it into something great. I’ve been carrying a paint color card (soothing green tea) for weeks, even though I know I can’t paint. It’s in the lease.

This move never felt right. I saved every box and piece of bubble wrap and I didn’t unpack everything. And what I did unpack I didn’t necessarily put up. I kept waiting. I’ll wait until I’ve cleaned everything. I’ll wait until I’ve lined all the shelves. I’ll wait until pest control comes. I’ll wait until the weekend, no not that one, the holiday weekend, the next one, yeah, that one.  I knew I wasn’t staying.

This house needs someone to love it.  The back room, where I’m writing this, is spacious with windows on three sides. It’s the perfect place for practice: meditation, yoga, writing. But it’s not for me.

I’m not buying because it’s a good investment or a buyer’s market. I’m buying because I want a home of my own. Because that place I can make mine. No in-between place. Something to paint any color I want, even soothing green tea. I think I’ve found home, finally.

Asking permission September 6, 2009

Right now, in this moment, my life seems full of things I don’t want to deal with. That’s been the past couple of weeks. In a new place, still putting away the pieces of my life, but not seeing a whole, never seeing the whole. Each piece I put up still has a thin coating of regret and disappointment I can’t seem to wipe off:  I know this won’t bring me the life I want, I wish I had the life to use this more, I think I made a mistake.

The other day at the end of the yoga class I teach at work, my young colleague asked if I was teaching anywhere else. I’m not. I talked in circles about how I just hadn’t gotten around to it, blah blah blah. And then she said this: “Well if you really wanted to do this you’d be doing it. Right?”  I nodded my head because the affirmative was the only logical response to that question.

Let’s discover a passion! And then do everything to hide that passion, make it contingent on some other factor, make it a footnote in life instead of the major text. That’s the type of person I am. My desire for something automatically makes it off limits, unattainable.

I should at least ask, right? Honestly, what’s the worse that can happen?  “No. Who do you think you are? You can’t have this. What made you even ask? You’re so obviously not good enough!” All said in a look, or the avoidance of a look, thus confirming my lifelong suspicions.  Yes, I know this is insane. I know I can’t possibly know all of that. I know I can’t read minds. And I know I’m making assumptions, but… I am a self help addict after all and this is how we think. If I didn’t think like this I probably wouldn’t need to read all these books.

So how should I think instead? So I can step away from the fully loaded Kindle? I think I may have the whole asking-for-what-I-want thing backwards. I think I need to ask others to give me something, a job, love, joy. Instead I need to ask myself for more, ask myself for what I want, give myself permission.

Let me just say off the bat that this theory is wrong. Why?  The whole idea of asking for permission, for approval, is based on someone else – who knows more, has more, frankly is just better – giving it. That’s not me. Or is it? Maybe I know more, have more and am better than I believe. Maybe the first step is asking myself for permission – and giving it – before I go into the world and ask for anything.

That’s an interesting idea.