Politicians, teachers, and my parents, brain-washed me into thinking that getting a good education, would land me a good paying job and I wouldn't have to worry about unemployment. Not like I would had I chosen not become degreed. It would take care of me and the kids. Having completed this monumental accomplishment would grant me the down payment on the American Dream and along with it would come the keys to home ownership. I could finally breathe in and out and have a place to lay my head and hat. I can remember driving around neighborhoods and housing developments, and sub-division after subdivision looking and the thousands and thousands of home, new ones, old ones, landscaped lawns and think: With all these thousands of homes empty and for sale, surely one of them can become mine. Certainly, I can stop renting.It happened. I went for it. Unbelievably, I found a lender, and wala, I became a homeowner. But it happened after my kids were gone and grown. My children never got the benefit from their own rooms, and the roomy comfort of a house. That saddens me, but I forged ahead. Now my home is not a five or six bedroom two story half million dollar home. It is a very modest three bedroom single ranch style home. Very small, but big enough just for me and my dog.
My nest was empty when I finally received the keys to my new home. It was a wonderful feeling. To walk into my own home. It felt like I had graduated. It felt like having received my diploma all over again... that moment in time, suspended with a glorious joy deep within all bringing a crisp smile all over. It almost felt like a dream come true. Let me be clear, it was a dream come true for me. Truly, it was. I felt great pulling into my garage. My GOD, how wonderful that was, how normal and wonderful it felt at the same time. It was royal, and I was a queen.
Things went well for the first year. The second year, I had financial woes so much so, I got behind in my mortgage payments. The rest of the story you know. Subprime lending. Now foreclosure. And to top it off, I have bee out of work for almost one year without any income other than the money I get from family and friends and that is fast becoming a tapped out source. So I am a Baby Boomer, with dull skills, and absolutely in the worst period to be without a job. It is no longer an American Dream. It is now a nightmare. I think back on all the work I did to get the degrees, yes I have two of them and to what avail. I have re evaluated my education. And I was doomed from the start. I never made the money I thought I would after college. My average stay on a job was three years or less, and I was subjected to chronic unemployment. Through no fault of my own, I fell victim to downsizing, company take overs resulting in large lay offs and company restructuring. This had an extreme adverse affect on my ability to keep a positive income and credit score and savings was not a factor. I struggled hard. Even with the degrees. Struggled to raise three children. One was a special needs child, my oldest and the extra costs with her care, along with my being a single parent, and low paying jobs mediocre at best, kept me in the red. But to rise above that struggle to finally get my own, was so super and now to have it taken away, and include this latest blow of being out of work at a time when unemployment is 6.1% nationally, when entire cities are filing bankruptcy, along with a failing banking industry, foreign oil forcing gasoline prices to more than $4 a gallon all means I couldn't have hit rock bottom at a worst time in US history.
I absolutely for the first time in my life, do not know what I am going to do, and how I am going to survive this one. I've bee knocked down before, but this feels like a knockout. Like being dazed. If someone would have shown this future picture to me back in my past, I would have categorized it as the finest piece of fiction I have ever seen on film. But it is real. A harsh dream turning nightmare with every day that passes. My home is now in full blown foreclosure. I still have no income other than the kindness of family and friends. Yes, I have sent out hundreds of resumes. Had a couple of interviews. No job yet. I feel cheated. I was given a false bill of goods when I was told, go to school, get a good education, gets you a good job. Wrong equation.
I knew I was in deep trouble when I found myself down to one pot, three spoons, and paper plates. I haven't seen the inside of a mall in 14 months. There is nothing I could afford to buy, shopping has been out of my equation for so many months, it would be strange to go to a mall to ...what shop! Food is primary. Shopping is a luxury. How did things get this bad? How did I wind up in this nightmare? When will it end? When can I wake up and smile again?
I feel that the education I received only has value to me. It doesn't have value in the market place. It started to lose its value somewhere after the millennium. I didn't see it happening but it did. It started to decline just as our economy started to decline. I feel as if I have been robbed. My education, my degrees have become so inflated that my son, watching my years of struggle with those same two degrees, refused to go to college. He enlisted instead. He saw my plight and took a different path. I am filled with dissolution, along with my newfound destitution.
As each day looms ahead, I am that much closer to my foreclosure being finalized. That much closer to actually being a homeless person, out on the streets with my dog. This is it... the Titanic is sinking, and I am on the ship for as long as I can remain, but continues to sink.
This is the Death of an American Dream on both fronts, dying slowly every day until dead.
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