Dream House
I still love our old house so much. It was my dream house. But then I had another dream.
Getting our beloved house ready for market has thrown a grenade into my already not-so-placid sea. Excitement, fear, wonder, sadness, anticipation, exhaustion, roiling around like a tsunami.
I used to be good at jumping off cliffs, never anxious that the parachute would stick. I craved it. I loved the free fall, throwing myself into an experience however laced with danger. Hitchhiking, running out on bar tabs, getting off at unknown train stops, cross-country trips, devil-may-care late-night decisions at the last minute.
Are you going? Hell, yeah, take me with you.
Where is that girl? She must be alive because this is what she’s doing.
I’ve worked as hard getting our house ready as I worked at the dude ranch in Colorado. I happen to be in pretty terrible shape, and the intensity of the physical labor has nearly taken me out, shedding light on how accustomed I’ve grown to leisure and convenience, the siren calls that lull me into thinking I don’t have a body.
Moving reminds you that you have a body. Your house has a body. Moving out of my house feels like moving to the moon. Most of my life I’ve lived 2.1 miles or less from my childhood home. Isn’t that insane?
Leaving feels like uprooting a very deep part of me. Just peeling the magnets off the fridge felt like peeling away an entire era, one where my son is in school and we all live together and everything is safe and familiar.
I still love our old house so much. It was my dream house. But then I had another dream.
My therapist Barbara said there’s a shadow side to everything, even happiness, and recommended Judith Viorst’s book, Necessary Losses, while I blew my nose and cried my eyes out on her soft blue couch.
Of course I feel everything all at once. Dreams have shadows, too.
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Your house is in the same neighborhood I grew up in. I had no idea! We lived on Verona Rd.