It’s so ironic. From the moment we committed to build the house I’ve had an overwhelming, even suffocating sense of karmic dread--that we were getting too far above ourselves, or maybe that we were just putting too many eggs in one basket. We wanted to make it up to ourselves for all we'd lost by building a house that could give us a warm hug in the cold grey winters here. And something in me said "hubris" at the same time I said "yes, that's what we need." The dread didn’t abate until the paint colors I'd agonized over went up about a month ago; then it eased a bit. I hadn't ruined the house. It came back with the ridiculous landscaping costs two weeks ago that I no longer had the energy, this close to closing, to hammer back down as far as ithey really should go. But for the last week I haven’t been feeling dread but rather have finally permitted some feelings of pride, longing, and excitement along with a little apprehensiveness of the drudgery of moving house again. The house is done, it looks good, barring a few paint colors that didn't quite work, and I was done making changes and costly, retirement savings-depleting decisions. No more guilt and worry, no more dread of financial disaster. In a couple more days we would finally have a real home, and really begin life again, after 17 wasting months of loss and limbo.

And then, today, I think it all may have started down the hill to the calamity I feared. We didn’t manage to get our 2008 tax return filed until our loan documents were already pending. Today the lender found out that there is no 2008 tax receipt, and everything on our loan stopped. So it looks like we have no loan, at least not until our rate lock has already expired, and well after our contract requires us to close. But we have put a fifth of our net worth into the house already, and we have no loan contingency in the contract. All of the scenarios for what to do now are going to wind up costing even more money, which makes my stomach hurt. But what really scares me is this thought--worse, it feels like recognition-- that has been swimming around in my stomach all day and has finally surfaced in my head: “I always knew deep down it would end in disaster, in complete and total loss. I somehow never could believe we’d all live there together. Losing Dodger and Mammoth and the Palisades house and Nathan’s school wasn’t the end of the losing. That was just the middle.”

Of course, I’m an under-medicated (manic?) depressive with (some say) post-traumatic stress disorder. So we can always hope that this is just my crazy talking.

It has just occurred to me, horribly, that the last time were were this smug and joyous and full of plans about an anticipated event, the outcome was so devastating that we--or maybe just I--have never recovered. Oh, God. Please, I mean really please, let me be wrong about this one.