This past weekend marked a milestone in my young adult life. I moved into my own place. No roommate. No sibling. No parent. No spouse. Just walls, hardwood floors, my daughter, and myself.
The house I moved into, a two-story home around my grandmother’s age originally had strange wallpaper and handmade shelves all throughout the house. Now, I have a retro green kitchen, and a pretty pink princess room for Evie, purple plastered against the four walls of my bedroom, and a chocolate brown living-room that is warm and inviting. It wasn’t easy turning a home that was built by someone else and lived in for years into mine… but it’s already almost there.
And that took me painting over the wallpaper, and removing the nick-knacks from the shelves, and painting over the growth chart of the two little girls on my bedroom’s door-frame. It made me sad, to pack up “Janice” as April lovingly refers to her and stack her in boxes in the upstairs loft, and was yet another reminder of how everything in life is temporary. I keep getting reminded of that every day.
While Janice was being transferred out of the new home, I took great care to make sure I left other ghosts behind me. Traces of Rick still linger through out the walls of my old place, traces of hurtful conversations and broken promises and moments of weakness that now linger in the pit of my stomach making me sick.
This house is more than a milestone. It’s a new start. And it’s a new start Evelyn and I both need.
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