Subjects Removed

It's been a long year so far, and we are only halfway through. As some of you know, I put my condo up for sale back in February. I thought it would sell quickly. It didn't. After much waiting and fretting, it is now sold.

While I thought the weight of stress would finally lift off me, leaving me with nothing but an overwhelming feeling of freedom, I'm actually suffering from a unique sort of melancholy. Yes, this is what I wanted, to be rid of the burden, financially more than anything else. And yes, this does represent being able to move forward. For the last year, I've felt stuck in a sort of limbo with very little to indicate I am actually moving in the right direction.

Still, there's this sadness. A grief. For a loss I am responsible for.

Don't get me wrong. This is a happy occasion, but I am still saying goodbye. To a place I bought at a very difficult time of my life. A home where I did a significant amount of growing and an equal amount of healing. In saying goodbye to this place, I am letting go. Letting go of myself, of parts of my past, of people and moments and love and losses I never thought I'd let go of.

Sure, I moved out awhile ago, but as long as I owned this apartment, I had an umbilical cord to the girl I once was. The sad one, who was so lost and broken she never thought she'd find her way. The heartbroken one. And the one who learned much and stopped feeling bad and started breathing in the trees and ocean, breathing out the doubts and anger. As long as I owned that apartment, I had an attachment to my friends, the people I love and miss. By selling it, I am acknowledging how much I miss those people. How detached I sometimes feel over here.

And I am saying goodbye to my ex. This sounds bonkers, doesn't it? I mean, we haven't been together for three years and have both been with other people for quite some time, two years and counting on my side of things. Still, this is where I went after us and it's where we worked diligently to form a friendship. That friendship still stands, I like to believe it always will, and I consider myself lucky to have it. It takes unique individuals to salvage a friendship from the wreckage of love, but it can happen, if you aren't both complete dicks.

It's weird. How a building, a five hundred square foot apartment, can represent so much of who you are and what you've been through. I understand those memories will be with me forever, but I didn't except this overload of emotion. Honestly, I thought there would be dancing and merriment. Don't think this is a regretful thing. It really isn't. That is not one of the hundred emotions storming through me.

And I am happy, but also sad too.

Funny how things are never quite what you imagine them to be. But at least this is a little forward movement. I think.