Home A...Loan

I sat there staring for a minute, hesitating before putting pen to paper.

I had wanted this moment for so long. The chance to call our tiny apartment ours.

I dreamed about it for so long, never daring to think about it becoming a reality.

It was one of those dreams held up high on a pedestal– the ones whose pristine state are not be altered by something as mundane as reality.

As I stared at the papers, there it was…our apartment described in detailed measurements and geographical location…and it could be mine as soon as I signed on the dotted line.

But what was this I was feeling? It was not the excitement I expected.

It was panic.

“Wait!”, I wanted to say. “Can I think about this for just a few more minutes?”

But the man before me was oblivious to my panic, going on and on about the minute details like the check, amounts and due dates.

“Terms and conditions”, he explained, catching my dazed look.

I shuddered. I shook it off in a visible motion and he noticed.

“Anything wrong?”, he asked casually.

How could he be so cold about the whole thing? So calculating and business-like? So mechanical?

Signing on that innocuous dotted line would set the terms and conditions of my life for the next 20 years.

“No, no problem at all.”, I say with a slightly defiant upturn of my nose.

I would not let him see my tattered nerves and the multitude of butterflies that were flying around in my stomach. No wonder Al Pacino said that pride was his favorite sin.

My palms were so clammy and cold – they didn’t feel like they belonged to me.

“Okay, then if you’ll just sign right here please.”

I gulped, steeled the pen in my hand and signed.

And signed.

And signed.

There were 3 copies and all pages had to be initialed.

And just like that, the little apartment Kiddo and I had been living in for the last three years was mine. It was ours for decorating as we pleased. We were no longer tenants.

It was ours….as long as I could keep up the mortgage payments for the next 20 years.

Twenty years. My god.

The last time I signed up for something that resembled “lifetime involvement” or “till death do us part”, I failed miserably.

What if I failed at this, too?

It seemed like another lifetime – these 20 years that this man so non-chalantly spoke about.

Kiddo would have moved out of the house, maybe would have gotten married and I’d still be paying for our apartment.

I was scared.

Who knows what will become of me 20 years from now?

What if I die? Who will continue paying for my mortgage? Where will Kiddo live?

Self-doubt began to creep in, emboldened by this fear.

Can I really do this on my own? Am I in over my head?

And for the first time in the 7 years since I had left my marriage, I wished I had someone – anyone -- at my side to hold my hand. I wished I had a co-pilot who could take over the wheel when I badly need some rest.

So I texted my best gay friend.

He’d be my husband by now, anyway, if only he weren’t gay.

He texted back immediately. “Don’t worry honey, the first dip is always the coldest.”

Yeah, I guess.

And as the man turned over my copy to me, I knew that I had already jumped and there was nothing to do but swim.

That was me 5 months ago.

The signing of my bank mortgage was followed by home renovation which in turn, brought on a series of events that tried my patience and grated my nerves like no other individual endeavor in my whole entire life.

It brought out a side of me that I never thought existed. People say that about love, about natural catastrophes, about having babies and other life-altering events. I’m saying it about money.

In those five months, I saw money change me. Not money per se, but the fear of running out of it, the constant threat of not having enough.

Many sleepless nights were spent going over the items that needed to be paid for and where to scrounge up the money to pay for it. In the middle of the day, I would be computing the running costs in my head. I was bargaining for pesos and cents with everyone from the contractor to the sales person at the hardware store. No amount was too small to be saved.

You know “Bridezilla” the monster bride?

What’s her equivalent when it comes to home improvement?

Someone who’s bitchy, demanding, irrational at times. Someone who’s a slave driving perfectionist.

Martha Stewart?

You could just as easily have used my name up there.

I thought that I was never the type to be consumed by money. There were times when I just threw in the towel and gritted my teeth with my losses, because I never wanted to cry over the proverbial spilled milk…

But here I was literally counting centavos.

It was tiring and counter productive, but I had no idea how else to handle a situation like this – where every ounce of success or failure would be attributed to me. I have never taken on so much on my own – alone.

More than the worries about money now, it was the ruminating and obsessing about where the money in the future was going to come from that was the source of my agony.

I did what I swore I wouldn’t do. I castigated myself for not saving enough and for my past financial mistakes.

It was a self-imposed whipping for my past sins of greed, selfishness and caprice when I could have and should have been saving for our home.

You see, I have never been good with money. I always seem to never have enough of it. Every payday, I am scrambling around for scraps of cash that may still be left in my ATM.

And renovating a house, like leaving Kiddo's father and starting a life on my own brought together two deadly sins – money and pride.

When I left my marriage, I swore that I would never let my daughter feel deprived of certain things just because she had a single mom and the other kids had two working parents and two times the disposable income.

But the core of it was I didn’t want to be pitied.

I had already failed at a marriage, I couldn’t damn well fail at life anymore.

That resulted in several years of retail therapy which wasn’t so much marked by ostentation, but more just that I was spending more than I could and buying what I didn’t need – just to prove to myself and others that I could.

And that resulted in a mound of credit card debt that I had only just recently finished paying off. And just when I did, I took on another debt – a twenty year mortgage.

I would like to think that I was able to turn a bad situation into a good one. I would like to think I was able to do better and be more because of this ardent need to show that tenacity and resilience were values that ran in my blood.

But I also know that if I had much simpler aspirations, managing my check book and credit card statement would also be simpler.

When can I live a life that is not ruled by money? Can anyone actually do that? At what point does money only drive ambition, rather than define it?

I don’t know the answer to that.

So in the meantime, I’ll just take it paycheck by paycheck. Mortgage payment after mortgage payment.

Note: Kiddo is now in the 2nd grade daughter isn’t old enough to move out or get married yet so she still lives with me. Our apartment was recently chosen to be featured in a home decorating TV show.