“Well, we must wait for the future to show.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
To come to a point where your dreams move away from your reach is hard.
The hubs and I have discussed putting our house on the market for months. We worked all summer on our home to prepare it to sell. When months zoomed by and it got colder and we weren’t ready yet, we decided to hold off until Spring.
We have many reasons we want to move. We need a better layout of rooms so that when the times comes that we plan for a second child (!!!), our bedrooms are on the same floor. Our neighborhood is not necessarily family friendly. I hate the schools in our district. Our main (and frankly only used) bathroom is very small. The house is over 80 years old. I want to feel safe walking out after dark.
But really, it’s the bedroom thing that’s got me wanting to move. We have two bedrooms on the main floor, and our finished attic acts as a third bedroom. A third bedroom with stairs so steep that we struggled to get a full size bed through the doorway. Meaning: I don’t think we could get a queen size bed up there. If we have a second child – I don’t want that baby or Abby being upstairs while the rest of us are down. The attic doesn’t maintain a comfortable temperature in the winter OR summer. To me, I have a hard time making this house work with a second child.
And talks of that second child have begun.
Unfortunately, realizations of how much debt we’ve accumulated have also come to light.
In this equation, our plan of moving out of this house (which has contributed to our mounting debt) have in essence been shut down because of our debt.
It is our own fault. I knew eventually this would happen. Denial is a powerful thing.
And now? I can’t allow myself to accept this as fact.
“If the market were different, we’d sell our house for a profit instead of breaking even, and we could pay off that debt.”
“Maybe we’ll win the lottery.”
“This isn’t a huge deal-breaker. We can still get a mortgage.”
When I think about it enough, my heart breaks hard and I nearly start to cry. To me, moving was a step towards the future, and I don’t want to put my dreams on hold. I want to know everything will still fall into place. That the choices we made in the past are not totally destroying our dreams for the future.
This is not the end of the world. If push comes to shove, we can make this house work. Knowing that we’ll be paying for our financial mistakes instead of living our lives in a new home? Hurts. Like. Hell.
