Living or Escaping?

I went to see another house with Nikki today, and brought Kanha too - a house at the other end of the scale:  sloping floors (not just crooked or soft in spots but at least a bunny ski hill routing through the kitchen), carpeting instead of hard wood, odd shaped rooms sold as extra sitting areas, a tiny bowling alley of outdoor space, and, for sure, no view.  Of course the price is only $189K -- too bad it doesn't work that I could buy a view with the differential I'd save vs. my desired house.  

When we had finished walking through the property and stepped out onto the street, Nikki said to me, "Oh, I have some information about the other house" -- to her, it's just "the other house" -- and my stomach did that slight flip that comes whenever news that matters is about to be given or received.  I looked at the flowering garden in the next house's yard and froze the moment in place, then listened.  To fairly good news, as it turns out.  They've come down to $575K, a full $120K down from their asking price.  Of course, this is a price that no inspection can undo -- it's take it or leave it.  Which would (will?) be fine as long as I don't have to get financing.  If the sellers can't finance it -- and that seems slightly less certain based on Nikki's feedback today -- and I have to get a bank or mortgage company to come up with the money, I will no longer be the one with the final say.  

Nikki is going back with a counter offer of $525K and then we'll have to put something in writing if we're still talking.  Another offer is still threatened, which might or might not happen.  As Nikki said, better not to think of that and pursue my own interests independently.  Whatever else happens is in someone else's hands, hands that have been persistently unforthcoming so far.  

I'm feeling hopeful now and, more surprisingly, nervous.  I suppose it's the natural outcome of getting closer to the reality of what has been hard to get -- it's the old problem of loving something you can't have;  once you can have it, perhaps it (he?) is not so hot.  For me, I think it goes beyond that though.  I went to see the uber-chick flick Eat Pray Love tonight after dropping Kanha off, all about a woman's search for identity and meaning in life after a searing divorce -- it's put me in that soul-searching zone, a place I visit often for reasons confusing to me as visiting rarely feels either comfortable or particularly clarifying.  So am I searching for a life, my life, in this house, a place to put my energies and passions and creativity?  If so, is that wrong?  Perhaps the better question is -- is it an escape from the life I'm living or can it become the life I want to, was meant to, live?  No Ketut, Julia Robert's Balinese spiritual advisor, to answer me tonight.