My dad sent me an email yesterday with a real estate link to the house that I was raised in. It was for sale. Again. Seven years after my parents sold it because they were going their separate ways.
I was taken aback by the feelings that I had when I looked at the listing. It was akin to ripping off a bandaid from a wound that has not healed. You think that it has healed because goodness knows that you have had the bandaid on there long enough, so it is rather shocking when you realize how open the wound still is.
Now I will openly admit that I am still trying to sort through my feelings about the end of my parents’ marriage. I was just shocked at how seeing my house…MY house…felt like a punch in the gut. Pictures of the rooms that I grew up in. The kitchen that we ate dinner in at 6 o’clock every night. The living room where I had long chats with my mom. The dining room for holiday dinners and doing puzzles with my mom. The family room where I watched Greatest American Hero with my dad, and the one show that the whole family could agree on, MASH. I’m just relieved that they didn’t show my room.
A big part of me was hoping that my dad was going to buy the house back, and then my mind wandered too far down the road of the vision I feel cheated of…taking my kids to visit my parents at that house with the court to play on and the big yard. A small voice inside me whispered thoughts about “Maybe Mom and Dad will get back together and buy the house back and it can all be how it should have been.” Like a 5 year old.
Both of my parents are with new partners, with whom I believe they are very happy, and I am happy that they are happy. They deserve happiness.
I just wish that they could have found it with each other.
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My life as a house…