House full of Goodbye

Moving Day

Today I am moving most of my belongings out of here.
Here. This place was my home. Home. It was my dead father, vacant mother, secret confidant. It was my whole world, the only place I felt safe. The only thing on earth that loved me.

My house loved me because I kept it uncontaminated in the areas it needed. And because I promised it forever. I promised, forever I would be here taking care of it.

Now I’m leaving.

First, I got a dog. A teeny tiny dog that I loved enough to see that the person I was living with in my loving house was not someone I cared for at all.

So I got rid of him. Then it was me and my house and my dog. Then, because of chance encounter, I started going to therapy. And slowly, that coupled with this chance relationship that has made me feel safe, supported and loved by a person for the first time in my life and opening up to my two best friends….I can leave.

The house is absolutely alive to me. All houses are. I feel them hurt. It whispers quietly to me not to go, not to leave it. It is getting angry at me and has been keeping me awake. It hates to love me.

When I leave I will be severing some vestigial limb so there will be bleeding. It will take some time for that wound to heal. And I will always carry the scar, the scar of my love lost.

I am sitting, writing this in my house, pulled around me. It is now a shroud of shrieking needles. Each of the thousands of sharp points singing out a threat in shape and sound: DON’T DARE LEAVE ME YOU CUNT. I can feel all the energetic anger concentrate just above my right shoulder blade and dart into me, pinning me down.

But I will got through the motions because now I have an clearer understanding and now way back. I have felt feeling good and compared it to what I thought was good and learned that what I was feeling was only relief. Relief from running, hiding, shame and threats of destitution. Taking a step up from mere relief and instead reaching towards trying to be happy is big. Seems very big right now. So maybe I will falter. Still, I can’t go back. And don't want to at all. I'm greedy for this new thing.

And still I listen to the house shriek and chatter and try to formulate the feeling of goodbye.