I have moments where I feel like high school was just yesterday. I can picture myself laughing with friends while eating popsicles and watching marathons of Trading Spaces. I had notebooks full of design ideas, layouts, and color schemes. Those were the days, a beautiful mix between dreams and reality.
I assumed that when I was an adult I would have the freedom to purchase what I wanted, decorate at my leisure, and own a home in no time at all. I assumed those things because I am ambitions, work hard, and always keep my eye on the prize.
What I didn't know was that my priorities would shift dramatically.
Since graduating high school, I have lived in twelve different places. There has been family graduate housing on campus while Tyler was in grad school, a 10' x 12' studio in Australia, a hospital corner with only two walls, the Ronald McDonald House, and this very old house.
And, this house is my least favorite. At first it was the smell, the ugly wallpaper, and the slivers from the floor. But then it was the mice, the drafty windows, and the sadness that lives here.
This house is not my home, and I have resented it for that. I have never felt comfortable here, I have never completely unpacked, and I only decorated one room (the only room you ever see in pictures). I resent this house because it holds all my feelings, my fears, and my worries. I can still smell Matilda's newborn vomit, I can still feel the emptiness of her nursery, I can still hear the questions of what happened to her liver. All of that still lives here, its ghosts reminding me daily.
So, it is time to let go. To move away. And, to buy our first home.
We put an offer on a lovely place, it was accepted with grace and kindness, and we will move in a little over a month.
It is time for a new beginning, a new notebook, and a new chapter.
