A Goodbye to the House that Built Me, Broke Me, and Put Me Back Together Again

It’s 11pm and I just realized that this will be the last night I ever sleep in this room. In this house. In my house.

Boone is curled up on my pillows with his head resting on my legs. My mattress has been on the floor without a bed frame for the last couple days. My shoes are in duffle bags, my books are in boxes. So many book boxes. I’m proud of that. This is the weirdest feeling ever.

I’ve moved out before. I moved out years ago and it was great. I loved being on my own, independent and able to make choices for myself. I still went home every other weekend though to see my family. I’ve always been able to come home. This house has always been my home.

My parents moved into this house when I was 2 years old. I’m now 33. Every single memory I have that is associated with “home”, “house”, or “living” is from here.

My mom sold the house. The house will be empty and belong to someone new as of Friday. We knew she was going to sell the house. We knew my parents, one day, would sell the house. And yet it still feels as though this is brand new information. It still feels as though so many parts of me are slowly and quickly being ripped apart and no one knows how to put me back together. I keep feeling as though I didn’t appreciate this house enough, or what I’ve learned because of it. Our family has gone through so much here, all the memories and nightmares that have all been a massive part of our story. This house has experienced so much that it overwhelms me when I try to process it being gone forever. We knew we weren’t going to have it forever, so why now, on the night before I lose it, does it suddenly feel like brand new information?

I don’t have many childhood memories. I can’t recall moments or emotional things from when I was really young, until around the age of 10. I know stories and have seen pictures that jog my brain a bit, but I got a concussion in the 4^th grade, and I’ve come to realize that I either never had those memories, or they were wiped away when I fell off that trampoline and hit my head. The stuff that I do remember are birthdays and playing games with my siblings at home. We would build forts out of blankets and chairs and run around with our stuffed animals and Barbies creating fantasy worlds where dogs and horses could talk and some even shot fireballs out of their heads. (I had a toy horse and a creative mind) My brothers would always be hitting baseballs in the house or shooting baskets on the hoop we installed in our living room. We rode bikes around our neighborhood until the streetlights came on. We would create new games constantly. We played video games as a family and Dad made pancakes every Saturday morning. We had Christmas Eves with our friends, and Christmas mornings just us as a family. We’d always have to wait until 9am for Dad to wake up before touching presents though. So, we’d all just sit in the den in our Christmas pajamas staring at the gifts and glancing at the clock until we could legally send a boy in to make sure Dad was coming out. Eventually we grew up and it became our parents waking us up instead.

Our backyard transformed over the years. We had a swing set, then a trampoline, and then an above ground pool. We got rid of all of that eventually and tried maintaining a garden but that didn’t work out and so we settled on a fire pit with bright red chairs around it. We hung stringed lights from our palm tree on the hill to the roof so that the yard would light up and seem magical at night. Our roof is ideal honestly. It’s just the right dimensions for laying out. You just have to hop onto the retaining wall in between our house and our next-door neighbors, then you make a big jump and you’re up. It’s actually scarier getting onto the roof than getting down but being that much closer to the sun was always worth it. Our roof is also the perfect place to watch 4^th of July fireworks, make out with someone, or cry hysterically. I’ve done all those things. Growing up and learning about life is funny because you don’t always realize the impact the house or space you are living in will have on you during such a powerful time.

My sister and I shared a room with bunk beds until we were 18 years old, and she moved away to college. I had the top bunk because I was older, and she had the bigger, bottom bunk. Sometimes I would have bad dreams though and sneak down to sleep with her because it made me feel safe. Sometimes I would just sleep in the bed with her because that was my favorite spot. When we were younger we got to decorate our room however we wanted. We chose fluorescent lime green paint, bright blues and pinks for our bedding and we covered our walls with posters of our favorite bands (The Jonas Brothers, One Direction, Dashboard Confessional, etc.), movie posters (Twilight), and pictures we took with our friends. We had so many pets that lived in that room including a hamster that we thought died but didn’t, rats which were adorable and friendly, and several chinchillas who ended up confirming that I am indeed severely allergic to rodents. We had our first dog sleep in our beds, we had all our dogs sleep in our beds. We made goofy videos on our computers of us dancing and singing and having ridiculous conversations with our friends or just the two of us. We laughed so hard we cried, we cried so hard we laughed, we fought each other verbally and physically in that room and we made up in that room. Most of those fights were over sharing clothes and whether or not permission was asked. We watched movies and told each other secrets. We talked about boys while laying in our beds, never needing to see each other to know that we were always listening. That room was our home in itself. When my sister moved away, our room became just my room. I painted over the bright green walls; I went for a more neutral aesthetic, and I got rid of the bunk beds. It was just me. That room became my safe space all over again.

I went through college, boyfriends, meeting new friends, partying, breakups and learning my way around alcohol. I cried myself to sleep because of broken hearts and anxiety. I taught myself about makeup and hair and tried to figure out my style and what clothes I liked. My friends would spend the night in my bed with me and several dogs at any given time. Sometimes one of those dogs would be a Saint Bernard and we’d have to make it work. I snuck boys into my room. I shoved them in my closet when I would hear my dad coming down the hall. I learned to tell who was walking around purely by the sound of their footsteps. I listened to my parent’s fight, and I fought with my parents. I screamed at my dad, I hid alcohol in my bookshelf, and I would sneak out to see my friends and boys that I liked. I threw parties when my parents went out of town. I lied about where I spent the night, and I would be so happy when I finally got home to my own bed. My happiest moments in that room were always me, in bed with whatever dogs were around, and either watching a Warrior game on my laptop or writing stories about my life. So not much has changed. I became a woman while living in that room. My dad sat on my bed with me after one of the times my ex had left me. He told me that my world was not ending. He told me that it was ok for me to feel sad and broken, but that I was more than that relationship and I would be ok. He then also told me that my ex would come back (he was right).

Moving out and looking forward to building my own family was so exciting for me. I loved having my “home” and “my home”. The space between the two was nice and comforting and also good for my well-being.

Moving back was so much harder than I thought it would be.

I left this house with my family intact. I came back into this house without my dad, and everything felt wrong here.

I was in this house the moment my dad died, and I think that tarnished it a little bit. Not everyone has a “Worst Moment of Your Life” kind of thing. I do. My family does, and for most of us, it occurred in the same house we felt the safest. The last time I saw my dad was in this house. This house was never the same once he didn’t come home. We did a great job of keeping him here though. We talk about him; we joke with him and about him constantly. He has always been in this house with us, because we made sure to not let him leave. That’s hard though sometimes. Sometimes he’s here too much and not enough at the same time and it can be suffocating. To walk into a room and be hit with the most intense memory or have one of those moments when you’re sure he’s just going to be there. I almost always expect to see him on the couch watching a recording of the day’s Dodger game when I get home from work. It took months to get out of the habit of expecting him to walk through the hallway whenever the front door opened. I still cry sometimes because he’s just not here. He will never be here again, and I think that’s why we have to go.

I always pictured this house being where everyone would gather for holidays at Grandma and Grandpa’s. I figured there would be dogs everywhere and people and babies running around in happy chaos. Not necessarily my babies, but in this fantasy, there are children. Shelby, Adam, Kevin and I would all be older and coming from wherever we ended up back to the house we all grew up in. We’d come back and share stories from our childhood and laugh together about how our parents always knew when we’d sneak in after curfew, or we threw a party and thought they had no idea. We’d sit around the dinner table where it was always just the 6 of us, and now, we’d get to look around and see how far we’d come. There won’t be any more Marlow holidays in this house. There won’t be any more dinner parties that Adam and I throw for our friends. I won’t get to barbeque ribs in the backyard while our friends drink, play beer die, and listen to music. We won’t get to throw parties anymore that end the next morning with Kevin and I severely hungover and close to death cleaning up the mess we somehow managed to make. I won’t get to come back to this house and see all the projects my dad completed and the ones he never got to. I’ll never get to cry in my bed in my room again. Our family will never be together in this house again and it’s finally hitting me what that means we’re losing.

I’ve struggled with the loss of this house for a few months now and I was angry for a long time. I’ve slowly come around to the reality and accepted the change that will happen in the next 24 hours. I do not like change. I don’t like when I’m uncomfortable. I don’t like losing memories or places that make me feel safe. But I also have come to see that this is a good thing. This house and all that it holds is so valuable. It’s lived a life for 30 plus years with one family. It has seen the good, the bad, the violent, the chaotic and it has seen us grow. We have all grown and it is now time to replant ourselves so we can continue to grow with new boundaries and make new memories. This house was where Dad last lived. He’s not here anymore and its ok to move on and start over because of that. Our family has always been so close. Personally, and physically. This will be the farthest we’ve been from one another and as terrifying as that sounds, I’m ready for it. I want to be challenged; I want to feel uneasy for a bit. My life hasn’t made much sense this past year and this has been a huge part of my confusion. I have been going through the stages of grief and the anger and depression were tough. I was the epitome of angry and depressed. I mean, I’m always depressed but this was different. It took a lot of time and healing and therapy to get me to a place of acceptance, but we made it. I fully accept this move. I fully accept that this is the right next step for our family. We all need to be out of this house and learn to live this next phase of our life without the memories holding us back. Memories live with you. They exist in your mind, your body and your spirit. You cannot choose when to access them or how you want to enjoy them or heal from them. They go with you, and I think that’s what I have learned the most.

We are leaving the house that kept us all connected. It kept us with dad, it kept him alive. Now we have to go out on our own and keep him alive within our new lives. We will build families and bring traditions that we grew up with into our new worlds. Our home is the same home whether it’s here or anywhere else we may end up.

Thank you to everyone who has been in this house. If you have ever come to hang out with us, did homework after school, watched movies, played games, had a sleepover, cried with me, drank with us, watched our dogs or any of the pets we’ve had, if you’ve driven by to drop something off, played wiffleball across the street, if you broke up with me here, if you’ve made up with me here, if we drunkenly hooked up at one of the parties I’ve thrown, if you ate any of the food I’ve cooked here- good or bad, if you’ve watched sports with us here, if you have been here for the holidays with us, if you helped us with a project or built something here, if you’ve ever felt like this house was your home, it was.

I’m scared, I’m terrified, I’m excited.

I’ll miss this house forever. We all will.

xx