Today I lost my house. When the movers left, I stood before an empty space that had been my home for 12 years and I felt…nothing. I wasn’t sad or mad.  I had never been ‘permitted’ to make the house a home so it never felt like mine. Fixing it up, or improvements of any kind had always been met with ‘it’s just a crappy trailer house’. And true it was, and true that it wouldn’t improve the value, but it was our home and I wanted to make it nice. You know, ‘home’. Paint some walls. Put in hardwood. Fancy it up.

The journey of that house can really symbolize so much of my life at this point. Hopeful in the beginning with many great plans. Complacent in the middle because I was too busy to make any improvements and it was easier to follow the wishes of someone else. Eventually resigned that it will never be the home I wanted because the arguments to make it happen weren’t worth the fight. And finally, I just gave up. I gave up cleaning. I gave up cooking. I gave up pretty much every domestic duty because…I just didn’t care. No. That’s not true. I cared. I just didn’t care enough.

When we bought it, it was going to be temporary housing until we could build. But then lay offs and affairs and firings changed our future and we built a company instead. Neither panned out as planned. We never built and Dad closed Maverick a few months ago. The business and it’s worries and stresses and bills took its toll on our finances these last 10 years. My leap into sales came too late to help. I couldn’t establish my territories and customer base before the fall of Maverick and the last year was devastating to us financially.

My husband never believed they would take our house. He steadfastly believed that they would make us a deal. Pay a little and you can have it, he thought they would say. Laughable, but it was what he so staunchly believed. We argued enough over it, that I finally let him have the decision. It’s yours, I said. You deal with it. You make the decisions. You make it right. You call them. You work it out.

Even when we went to court, he still steadfastly held to his belief. He told me as we drove to court that he knew they’d want to work out a deal. He was wrong. We didn’t pay 6 months of house payment. They weren’t looking for some deal. The judge asked me nothing. He never looked my direction. With the signing of a piece of paper, I lost my home.

So today they came and took it away. I could cry. I could be mad. I could hate. But I don’t. I don’t really feel anything. And to be honest, that scares me more than anything else.

I’m looking to begin a new journey, start a new chapter, but I don’t really know where I’m headed. I plan to use the blog to mark the journey. One thing is certain, it’s bound to be a helluva ride.