In the Home Stretch

We made the final BK payment this week and today we took the pre discharge online class. We will have our certificates tomorrow morning then as soon as our trustee posts our final payment, we can fax the last few documents to our attorney, get our discharge, close our case and we will be finished. I hope that all said and done, this will be completely over some time in July. By the time our case closes, we will have been in Chapter 13 hell for almost four years. We are finally nearing the end of a nightmare that has lasted longer than I care to remember and I feel an immense sense of relief that it is almost over.

Anyone who says Bankruptcy is an easy way out, a way to live high then run out on your debts, immoral or wrong has clearly never needed to file. We didn't file to take the easy way out or to run out on our bills. We, like a lot of people, got bitchslapped by the economy and started drowning, financially. We weren't living high. Just the opposite. We were just trying to survive. We didn't have new cars, fancy clothes, a slick house. We didn't take vacations, we didn't send our kid to a private school. We just wanted to pay our bills and keep food on the table. And as time went on, that got harder and harder. We got caught in an evil cycle and, no matter what we did, how hard we tried there was no pulling out of it.

Bankruptcy for us was a very last resort after we exhausted all of our other options. You don't go into a Ch.13 lightly. A large number of people who file Ch.13 never complete the process. It is hard. It is hell. But we got through it. And we are coming out the other end. Yes, we will get a discharge for much of our debt but we also, in the last three years, paid a lot of it, through the plan. We didn't get off easy. We didn't get off for free. We are not ashamed of what we did and we make no apologies. Bankruptcy saved us and is giving us a chance. That is all we ever wanted.

I think that I can finally dare to breathe, again. It is a pretty fantastic feeling. One I haven't enjoyed for many, many years.

Hot it is, today. We are enjoying near record warm temps. Thanks to the way our condo is built, we have had to start using our A/C. I wouldn't normally run it for days that are in the 80's but it gets like an oven in the upstairs main living area and it is necessary to keep from frying out our brains. I am looking forward to finding a house, better built, better insulated, maybe with some trees around it? Whoever said that it is cool up here in Prescott fucking lied.

I need to go out for a walk. Hopefully I can talk doofus brain in to it.