Today is a rather emotional day for me because Baba and I officially sold our house back in Texas. Instead of feeling overjoyed at the fact that we no longer have to pay double rent monthly (our apartment in California and home mortgage in Texas), I find myself experiencing mixed emotions. What gives?

Imagine the experience of a bad break up with your ex. The months leading to the actual break up day is usually stressful and can get ugly. For us, the last few months in Texas was spent constantly packing up boxes, rushing to sell our furniture, and hustling to get everything clean and manicured for our real estate agent. I’m sure I had a few breakdowns thinking I wouldn’t survive the entire process. The kids were of no help either because they were too busy unpacking what I had just packed.

Then there’s that period after the break up where you just want to avoid bumping into the ex at all costs. You do what you have to do to get your mind cleared of any trace of the relationship. This could mean disconnecting with your ex on social media, avoiding hanging out with mutual friends, or distracting yourself with new experiences. For us, that meant leaving our neighborhood and moving to a different state where we would experience a new city life. Heck, I even chopped off my long curls and got a new hairstyle after the move!

But no matter how hard you try to forget and move on, there’s always that one song that comes on the radio linked to a memory, photos you “forgot” to delete from your phone, and those late nights where you lay there wondering what the other person is doing. For us, I tried not to think about the pain of paying for an empty house. It was easier for me to let our agent handle everything and to only reach out if there was a serious buyer. Of course that left me wondering most nights how our house was performing on the market. Were people expressing interest? Did we have showings this week? How did people respond? AND WHY WON’T THEY CLICK THAT DARN LITTLE RED HEART ICON NEXT TO OUR LISTING?!?! You get the point. I didn’t want to know while also wanting to know. Sound familiar?

Now comes the tricky aftermath of a break up. This is when you find out that the ex has moved on with another person. True feelings sometimes surface at this point and you decide if ultimately the break up was a good idea or bad one. You may even start to wonder about the new person and possibly make unfair assumptions. Either way it’s too late to do anything (unless you’re in a Hollywood movie and do crazy things to win your love interest back…of course all within 90 minutes). For us, it’s bitter sweet. Getting glimpses here and there about the new family left me wondering if they would appreciate the house as much as we did. Would they be a strong addition to our neighborhood community? Would our neighbors like having them around more than us? Did we make a mistake leaving Texas and moving the family out to California? At this point only time will tell.

Finally, there comes a period where you manage to find closure and move forward. In fact you may even forget the messy break up and start to remember all the wonderfulness that once was. Hopefully there was a period where everything seemed perfect and made sense. For us, buying that house was not only a big deal because we were first time home owners, but it also marked a new chapter in our lives where we all reconnected and focused everything on our growing family. Will we miss the house? Of course. Do we regret spending the last couple of years in it? Not one second.

Doh, I passed my writing limit! Let me grab a donut and I’ll be back to write a follow up. Hope you were able to follow along my analogy of selling the house to a break up. If not then I’m guessing my blogging days are limited haha

brb,
THM