Most days I don’t enjoy talking about my foreclosure. Most days I don’t feel like seeing or talking to anyone.  Most days my life feels like it’s going down in flames and I don’t want to face the world.  I don’t show up for parties, return phone calls or emails and will drop off the map at the drop of a hat.  Most days I walk out the front door and wonder if the neighbors across the street who just sold their house know I’m in foreclosure.  They must.  Any realtor worth a 6% commission would pull the records from the surrounding neighborhood these days.  Foreclosures bring down values of neighboring houses.  Oh gawd, they must know.  I cannot meet their eyes.  It’s too much.  It’s too hard.  Instead I look downward at my shoes and silently ask myself, “Do these sneakers belie my age in a good way or bad way?”  The answer doesn’t really matter.  Most days I’m going to feel EMBARRASSED no matter what I wear.  At least I’ve got Lady Gaga to keep me company in that category.  I’d feel sorry for the poor, little creature if she wasn’t rich and famous.  If ever the opportunity arises I intend to explain to her that true humiliation is when you live in a house you can no longer pay the mortgage on… for over a year. 

I have the worst kind of guilt: Catholic guilt without the Catholicism.  I'm really good at beating myself up over my mistakes but terrible at tending to the bruises afterwards.  A financial meltdown can do this to a person.  You torture yourself until you can barely function but thank your lucky stars that you still posses a modicum of emotional stability.  It is this tiny shred of sanity that allows me to retrieve the mail from the mailbox at the bottom of the front stairs by the curb.  It is this tiny shred of sanity that reminds me to feed the cat and empty his litter box.  It is this tiny shred of sanity that allows me to see the absurdity in a 37-year-old single man that treats his cat more like a partner in crime than a pet.  It is this tiny shred of sanity that explains to my brain the connection between taking a shower and smelling like an acceptable human being.  It is this tiny shred of sanity that gets me through to the end of the day until my head can rest gently on my pillow... so that a few, short hours later it can start all over again.  Damn that shred of sanity.  What it cannot offer is a sense of joy because sanity is a survival mechanism meant to keep things slow and steady so the boat doesn’t tip over and throw you into the ocean without your water wings.  The only time this isn’t the case is when a large, man-eating nightshade vegetable like a tomato is chasing you.  That’s when all bets are off and survival requires turning into the craziest bat out of hell imaginable so you can then run like one.  Oftentimes I wish I were facing a killer tomato instead of foreclosure.  The monotony of slogging through this situation feeling scared and embarrassed makes me feel... DEPRESSED.