13 June 2015

House Hunting: The Lost Dream House

When I saw this photo, it seemed to so perfectly capture what I've been feeling this past week. Oh we were so close to getting the house of our dreams this past week. This was a house we'd been watching closely for five months and it was ours for the taking when another significant price drop came. Through a crazy, fluke-ish set of circumstances we lost the house in the very last few hours of negotiations due to a competing offer that came in at the same time we made a very small counter-offer.


Talk about feeling like you want to hurl. We have just felt sick about it. Full of doubt and questioning not only of our decisions, but questioning having trusted our guts, which at this point seem to have done us wrong. In a greater sense feeling really let down that when it seemed to have all miraculously come together in ways we could never have imagined that felt so right and so hopeful, we lost it in an absolutely bizarre set of circumstances. This is a house that had only 3 previous offers in 6 months. We were the fourth and the fifth had to come in just at the same hour we were about to wrap up the deal.

This is a house I've been driving past almost daily. We have pondered and prayed over this house, we have meditated living in this house. I've said repeatedly to myself "if we don't get it, I am okay with it, as long as we did out best." Well, we absolutely did the best we could with the entire process and I am so not okay with the outcome.

This is that house that immediately spoke to all three of us, where we could see ourselves living and where we could completely imagine our life happening. And we were so close we were just waiting for final word and then it was gone. It was like the bottom fell out of hundreds of hours of work, weeks of watching, months of hoping there would be a miracle. And the miracles came and then the miraculous outcome did not.

Boy are we devastated and yet we don't have any choice but to lick our wounds and get up and keep marching. Marching towards what I have no idea. We have seen so little that we are really interested in and it's 99% impossible we will find something as absolutely unique as what we thought we were headed to.

I tried to climb back on the realtor.com pony later in the week but it just made me feel too sick. Instead I went back and looked at the not yet removed listing of the house we so badly wanted. Oh, what a heartbreak.

It's so easy to say to others, "Oh, it will be okay" and "Things always happen for a reason" or "Something better will come along" but man those words don't sit well in the depths of one's grief. I feel like life has been plenty tough on us the past few years, from war zones to car accidents and near fatal illness - and this just really scratches the surface. I think we've seen enough of the trials and tribulations situations.

I share all this frustration not for a pity party but with the realization that we all face these uber frustrating times and I'm assuming there will be a lesson in it. I'm praying to see the light, to feel the peace and to have the faith that this is just a bump in the road, but it can be difficult to keep hoping and to keep pressing forward. Right now I feel like I will never, ever get over losing that house. It was the perfect house in so many, many ways. I will confess to a lot of tears and a lot of questioning - and some anger at how this so miraculously DIDN:T happen. My little family too, is completely devastated and that has been a burden in itself trying succor their mourning while dealing my own anger and frustration.

So what does one do in the interim...in that moment when you realize you've just been kicked off a bucking bronco and open your eyes to find yourself covered in dust in a heap on the hard ground? Maybe you do just hurl. You stare, sulk, cry, kick, scream, weep and mourn until you get it all out of your system. After you spin the situation around and around and work yourself into a bit of a frenzy and hurl out every bit of offending anxiety until your system is again clean and you can start digesting life again.

We had one big disappointment with a house right at the beginning of the year and that took us a couple of months to get over. We had not been emotionally invested in any other house until this one and it too vanished into thin air.  I'm not sure how long the mourning process will be with this house. I think for each one of us the emotions and hopes and dreams were different so we'll all have to work through it in our own way. And so in the midst of the twirling and hurling, we have to find our way back on our feet and moving forward. I hope the process isn't too difficult. I hope our hearts and minds are captured by something new soon. Until then I'll steady myself on a handrail or wall somewhere until I feel ready to walk again.

I'd love to hear your home buying life lessons and gems of advice. I imagined this process would be much simpler, but it has not been that much fun. It's bee more of a long journey...one that continues on to an unknown destination. But I would love to hear that you landed where you were meant to or that you came to know the house you so thought you wanted turned out to not be the house at all. This tired girl is going to sleep this off for a while. Trying to remember to shine.

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