Brown Street

I am a failure at 40 Days of Writing! (Melodramatic). I have not written in the past four days! But I have a good excuse. I’m moving on Saturday and I have been cleaning and packing and organizing and freaking out.

I’m super excited about where my life is going, and extremely happy that the house I’m going to is right around the corner; literally steps away from where I am now, but it’s slightly bittersweet. And here’s why:

The cottage was mine. All mine. It’s where I learned to be happy on my own. It’s where my broken parts healed. It’s where I was able to turn the key, walk in and find comfort in being alone. It was a refuge rather than an empty house. It’s where I painted the walls, resurfaced cabinets, hung closet doors and shutters, installed a ceiling fan and new light fixtures. And when that was done, I went outside and trimmed blackberry bushes, pulled weeds and planted flowers.

It’s where Sarah is. She’s in the front house and I’m in the back. And when she bought the property almost three years ago and told me there was a granny unit cottage, I was super excited, but then she showed it to me and I said, “I don’t know if I can live here.” And she said we would redo it with new floors and new counters and new appliances and a new porch and she did all that. And together we brought it from a dark, dank, old smelly granny unit to the adorable place that it is today.

It’s going to be hard not to think of it as my own any longer. It’s going to be hard thinking of someone else walking on the floors, taking a bath, and cooking on the stove. My stove.

It’s where my heart opened up. It opened so wide that I’m ready for the next chapter in the story of my life.