Even though I resurrected and revamped this blog at the darkest point of my life, the posts themselves have been mostly upbeat and positive. Yeah, not today. Even though this blog is available on the world wide web, I write it, for the most part, for myself. And I need to be positive because LIFE GOES ON. But sometimes even when you are making a genuine effort to move on, things from your past jump out at you.
My husband has asked for a divorce. With that comes a boat load of introspection, pity parties, frustration, sadness, guilt and at least a half dozen other emotions. My part of this journey began officially last April. By December, it was clear to me that nothing I could say or do was going to change our situation. There's a quote by Viktor Frankl: "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves". Something about those words resonates with me. Though, at this point, realistically I'm going to have to change a lot more than just myself...including, but not limited to, where I live.
In doing so, I've decided to build a house. I have picked a builder and a house plan. Today I had to go by his office to pick up his revisions to review. Sounds great, right? Just what someone trying to move on needs, right?
Wrong.
The builder's office is Creedmoor. The significance of Creedmoor is that it's where my husband and I built our first house. Until today, I had not been back since the day we moved out. I had absolutely no interest to ever go back. It had some good memories, but sometimes the bad ones are way more overpowering. Creedmoor = Bad. Period.
It was where I lived when I encountered the most traumatic experience of my life. It is also where we were when our marriage received its largest test. And even though I thought we had passed and gotten past that test while we were still there, I'm not sure either of us looked back when we left. Good riddance. Moving out afforded us the chance to physically remove ourselves from the place that caused us both pain.
As I was driving to Creedmoor this afternoon, I started to panic. My breathing accelerated and I was anxious. I did not want to go to the place I associate with pain. After I picked up the revisions from the builder's office, though, I decided to drive by my old house. Pain or no pain, I was curious if it looked any different. I was curious how I would feel pulling into the neighborhood. It looked the same as I remembered it looking. I noticed a new mailbox and some pavers around the trees and a few new bushes, but the rest was as I remembered it. And I realized there was no pain seeing the house. It's just a structure. A house is where you put all your shit. A home is where you make your memories.
In my reflections this evening, I am able to think of some good memories from that house which made it a home. It was where we brought home our first puppy...a sweet, black lab affectionally callled Allie Bear who happily played in the back yard and was our four-legged baby years and years before we ever had a two-legged one. It's also where we entertained our friends with game nights and lasagna dinners. Most significantly, it's where we created the nursery for our son Foster. That is the house we brought him home to and watched him take his first steps, say his first words, smear red icing all over his face from his Elmo birthday cake and find his first bunch of easter eggs.
I am now able to separate the painful events from the physical location. But here's why: the pain which was inflicted on me and also the pain that I inflicted did not stay in Creedmoor. It moved itself to Wake Forest when we did along with all our other baggage. And if you don't work on sorting through it all--fixing what's broken, getting rid of what's destructive, nurturing what's good then the next place you live is just another structure. It will not keep at bay your demons nor your troubles. You can not run from your problems. You either face them or they catch up to you eventually no matter where you live.
I wish when I had moved all my shit into this house that I would have had the good sense to realize that changing a location doesn't change a situation. But I didn't. And so with any mistake, the most you can hope to do is learn from it. And I fully intend that my next move will be more than just a physical change. That is my lesson and it's not something that just came to me in an epiphany on my trip to Creedmoor, but being there and seeing a place I thought was "bad" did make me realize "bad" isn't a place.
It's a state of mind.
It's a lesson not learned.
It's a mistake.
It's a situation.
It's a circumstance.
But it is not a place.
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