Throughout the packing and loading process, I was overcome by the urge to stop and write it all down. Hours spent with a tape gun in hand while simultaneously mentally posting to get through the moment. I could not allow myself the luxury of writing, because time was fleeting.

As the previous residence looked less and less like home, the first home the Mister and bought together, I thought back our early days there. We moved in on our first anniversary four and a half years ago. As a “gift” to my family, I didn’t ask them to help us with the heavy lifting. In fact, I didn’t actually tell them we were moving at all until two weeks after the fact. But I did tell them.

That first night we both exhausted. After a quick shower, we rushed off to the grocery store to gather emergency provisions for dinner. In the produce section, I experienced a moment of clarity in which I realized with all the hustle of moving, I neglected to purchase a card for the Mister for our first anniversary. I produced some bullshit story about getting an item from the opposite end of the store so I could find a card. After I returned, the Mister experienced the same brain fart of enlightenment and fled to the card aisle as well.

I always liked the old house. The open floor plan. All the windows beckoning sunlight indoors. The facade completely different from the other houses in the neighborhood. The backyard to which we devoted so much sweat. The property fit the Mister’s and my personalities well. If we could have plucked that house from it’s foundation and set it upon a lot in the new community, the Mister would have.

Mister Hombre is fond of telling me home is wherever I am. That’s one of the things I love about him. He’s my anchor. For me, home is more than a safe place for me and those I love, it’s a place I can grow emotionally and intellectually. A place that inspires me to be the best person I can.

I distanced myself from the house long before the move. It began with the first false start preparing the house for sales two years prior. I boxed up books and clutter and the realtor advised us would distract potential buyers. Gradually the personal touches that described us were eradicated, and the space transformed into a generic home inhabited by art collectors with paint preferences that did not include safe colors like beige. When the rubber ducks and art history books were delivered to storage, my sentimentality for the space begin to wane. For the Mister it continued to feel like home…until the last drawings were removed from the wall.

I anticipated the stress of packing, but not the emotional speed bumps of leaving the space behind. As the contents were gradually emptied from the space, the echos grew, our voices were boomier, the space grew sadder, abandoned. It never occurred to me that I would experience any feelings other than relief.

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Drawing of the living room. Point of view top of the stairs. The old house, when we still called it home.