As I mentioned below, we bought our home in 2008. We rented a townhome in the neighborhood for a year, and then decided to have one built ourselves. I was obsessed with building our home! I've never shied away from any reason to make a binder, so I launched in to Barbie home builder mode. The model home for the builders was the same as the model we were having built so I spent hours in that model. Measuring, looking at paint colors, floor samples, cabinet stains.. all of it. I wanted this home to be perfect. I researched, bargain shopped and haggled our way in to our home on August 29th. My only disappointment was that PC didn't want to spend the night of the closing in the new, empty house. That just seemed like the perfect sitcom ending to my months of planning but he thought it was silly.
Fast forward to today. I'm sitting in the office in tears while I'm supposed to be cleaning. We put the house on the market in March. I moved out in mid-March and PC has been here since. I was also the one to move out when we separated last year. Neither one of us can afford the mortgage on our own, and I am the one who has had a free place to go both times. During both times of separation, it has been heartbreaking when I've had to make a trip back to the house. Today, someone wants to come back to see the house for the second time. Very promising and exciting! I've been overjoyed about it! Until I got to the driveway. Looking at my house and seeing the house numbers, it started... the flood of memories.
We had a choice of where we wanted our house. Our block of homes is anchored by our model on each side. PC thought long and hard about it and decided on where we are based on where we would get morning/afternoon sun and how far the neighbors would be. I preferred the way 5938 sounded and looked but we ended up going with 5932. From there, my eyes move on to my "Spring has Sprung" flag that I bought last year, right before we separated. The storm door that his dad's friend helped PC put up. The doorknob and lighting package that we chose. The hardwood floors I agonized over. The couch that we bought with money from wedding gifts. Our beautiful bedroom set, taken from the pages of a magazine. Of all of these, the ones that sting the most are the memories that never happened. The kids that would be brought home from the hospital to this house, the fun parties that didn't end in fights, the years and years of holidays and anniversaries.
Of course, if I'm being realistic, I should be remembering the fight we got in to in the kitchen that left me on the floor. The trash can that I have looked through so many nights, trying to quietly estimate how much he'd had to drink. The dent in the garage door from some time that I made him angry. The bed that I have been kicked, shoved and pushed off of. The closet where I found the hidden bottle of vodka. I could go on and on. Instead though, for some reason, I choose to torture myself with "memories" of things that never happened. The fairy tale that never quite was.
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