If you wonder where I have been for the last three weeks or more, it’s because my negative mind has been winning the battle. It is like slipping into a dark chasm and having to climb out, feeling your way along, your fingers bleeding and sore as you try to grab hold of the rocks for support and proceed to some faint flicker of light up ahead.
The loss of a house to foreclosure has precipitated an entire chain of events I could never have foreseen, nor could anyone who has shared this rocky path with me. Our government’s failure to put their finger in the dike and stop the floodgates from overflowing, sweeping so many homeowners along with the rising tide, has been abysmal and as sure as if they had pointed a gun and pulled the trigger. None of the many stop gap measures they gave lip-service to had the backbone of true allegiance behind them, and were just a distraction to appease those who had no one close in the fray. Like those of us who had no son, no relative in Vietnam, it remained was a war we just read about and we formed our opinions from the stories we were told. If you had a relative in this losing battle, you could always pretend it was their own fault for taking the loan they couldn’t afford in the first place, but if you had an ounce of compassion, you could see that it wasn’t anything like you were being told by the news media.
Unfortunately, it is no where near over, and the down-slide continues throughout the land. The middle class we grew up with is disappearing off the face of our landscape, perhaps for good. The hopelessness that accompanies it is felt as deeply as the loss of a child in a war that should have never been fought, with an enemy whom we still cannot name because we fear it is an inside job. The scars are ugly and they will be evident for a long time to come.
Like a rape by a trusted family member, your common sense mind just keeps telling you that someone should have seen it coming, could somehow have intervened, before your life was changed forever. Your mind has a hard time grasping that it is your own fault and that those who could have prevented it looked the other way as they took care of their own needs, fueled by their own selfish greed.
We have raped the American Dream and most people who feel victimized may never have had money to give a Bernie Madoff, but they can certainly recognize a ponzi scheme after they have been in one.