Day 37

When I was 16, I returned from summer vacation on the east coast and found out that our family was in for a move. 

A month later, we ended up in this house, my ninth, and arguably, favorite.

This house got me ready for two proms.

It sent me off to my high school graduation and the day I left for college I craned around in my seat with tears rolling down my face as I struggled to fit in just one more snapshot memory of the front yard.

The first time I met our dog, Logan, I was sitting in that garage building a boat for my junior Physics class.

During the Summer I love to open the front windows of my bedroom and soak in the warm breeze of early evening and watch the kids play hide-n-go-seek.

I learned to drive out of that driveway.

This house gets lined with bright, cheerful Charlie Brown Christmas lights every December.

On Sunday afternoons, I would come home from church and help my mom start dinner and then settle down in the living room for this show.

I fell in love on the doorstep of this house.

This house took me from a child to a woman.

This house is my home. The best one I can remember.

And soon it will be nothing more than a memory. 

My parents are moving. 

To where, we're not sure. 

But when I go back to San Diego to visit next weekend, it will be the last time I wrap my hand around the banister, or slouch against the wall in the office while I wait for my mom to finish checking her email, or lay in the middle of the living room playing with our dogs. It will be my last nights in the bedroom I adore and the last time I can lounge on the back balcony.There will be no more walks in the park or on any of the many trails that that dot the surrounding hills.

I always imagined bringing the (currently) nameless, faceless man I hope to marry to that house to meet my family and see my hometown. Now it will be a place I might drive by on occasion. I might park across the street and consider knocking on the door before eventually heading off into the sunset of my new life. A life without this house.

I am, to say the least, devastated.

This house was the last link to my life before utility bills and term papers. The last link to my childhood. To leave it is to officially take the leap into adulthood, a dark, scary world where home is not where you grew up, but where you're parent's get the newspaper.

So many times over the past two years I have felt that I was slowly fading into a version of me that would seem unrecognizable to the self I was the summer after graduation. In those moments, I longed, not only for home, but for this building that sheltered and protected me from all of the harshness that 16 to 18 can hold. 

Normally, I would chalk this all up to a new adventure. Be grateful for the good times you were blessed with, and look forward with optimism. Life moves on. Things will work out. Have faith.

But, friends, can I be honest with you? I mean really honest?

I think I owe you that.

All I can do is cry...

*****

I know they say you can’t go home again
I just had to come back one last time
Ma’am I know you don’t know me from Adam
But these hand prints on the front steps are mine

You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could walk around I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me

Miranda Lambert, "The House that Built Me"