“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

It seems like all I do is write the same thing, over and over and over. I’m a bit tired of it. Though I really don’t know what to do except write it. All of it is just sitting there. Today is no different. The foreclosure notice went up on the gate. Zip tied up there with its bold red 24 point letters. For all the world to see. This is the beginning of the end. The notice came that the property would be photographed. In order to auction it they need photos for the ads. What should I think and feel in this very moment? What is the appropriate response? Is there one? I’m not even sure. I went for a run to settle the rising panic pushing at my chest. I ran away from this place and that notice with its big red letters. I ran from all the frustration and anger. 49 days and counting. I ran to find some peace in my head and in my heart. I ran to leave the pain and frustration behind and replace them with physical pain and exhaustion. I did that, but it was all waiting when I returned. The notice and the countdown. The stress and the anxiety curled up here at the door waiting my return. I don’t think we will escape this one. There will be no rescue this time. For all the words spoken and all the big ideas, at the end of the day it is nothing. We are still here holding our breaths trying not to kill each other in our terror over losing this place. We are losing our home. The reality is settling in. There is no love here now, only anxious irritable days. The obvious futility of our daily routine. None of it matters beneath the shadow we are living under. I want to kick and scream and tear something apart. Instead I am silent, doing everything in my power not to panic.

I just don’t know what we are doing. All I do know is it is 49 days away.