Tears

So tears came for me tonight, great gutted wrenching howls that probably terrorized the whole neighborhood.  I don't want to say too much about it, just that it was sacred, and scary, and I lived through it by myself, without calling out for help.

Househunting on the cheap in the Bay Area

Things I like: 

• Quiet streets
• Yellow houses
• Yellow kitchens, also white, or blue.
• Laminate or hardwood floors
• Yellow (or white or blue), sunny kitchens with hardwood floors (duh!)
• Tile floors also
• Big, bare yards (blank slate!)
• Big windows
• Open spaces
• No neighbors!  Or few of them, and quiet - like I have now.
• A place for the Leopard to roll around in the sun and show her chubby pink belly to the sky
• A short, predictable commute to work.  1/2 hour, just long enough to eat breakfast and assemble my mental armor.
• Green houses.
• Pink houses.
• A place where I may consider transferring the decomposing body of sweet sacred Georgia Brown.
• A place where I feel safe OR a place cheap enough that I reserve some money for a big fence and an alarm.  But preferably the first.
• A place where I can lie with no shirt on in the clean sunny dirt (see above).
• Having a vegetable garden.
• Not having to freak out about locking up my bicycle in maximum-security solitary confinement.
• Blue houses (a nice blue, or blue and white.  Not the depressing, dull, poverty-grey-blue.)

Things I do not like:

• Grout.
• Having to move at all.
• Having to weigh my safety vs. my privacy vs. hours in the car every day vs. sunlight.
• Grey houses, or brown, or a weird, deranged pastel that is mostly dirt.
• Carpet, especially if/when it is old and disgusting.
• Neighbors with pitbulls.
• Neighbors with un-neutered, uncared-for pets of any kind.
• Being single (so far.  To be fair it has only been three weeks).
• Knowing I will probably get out-maneuvered by counter-offers or cash investors even if it's a property I *don't* love.
• Sitting in traffic for the hours I will end up doing if I get a place I can afford (one hour each way every day).  Achy back, no food, polluting my sweet sweet world.
• Jumping awake in the middle of the night wondering if someone is breaking in (not looking forward!)
• Seeing people on meth or other drugs twitching near the house I'm looking at.
• Condos where there is someone above you, below you, and to either side.
• Small, concrete patios with no sun.
• HOA dues of $300 at least.
• Places that smell or feel like urine, smoke, or anger and hopelessness.
• Looking at my current home with an eye to what’s mine, what’s hers, and what has to go.
• All this, really.  

I am grateful, of course.  Not of course, like it's a given.  I am grateful, simply, punto y final.  I have my health (no cancer!), safety, a clean, safe home while I figure out what is next.  None of that is to be discounted and plenty of women do not have any of those.  And please, say a prayer for those who do not.  (Goddess protect them, those who do not.)

But I still have my own unique experience which is that I. Hate. This.  I did not want it, and I do not like it.  I had built the life I longed for, my co-builder jumped ship, and now I need to cast about and look for the next shore.  (I don't care if that is a mixed metaphor, it works for me).  I can do it, and I will, but I don't have to like it, and I don't.  Now.  On to see the next listing.  

Question night.

On some level I don’t believe it, can’t believe it, don’t even want to write about it and take that one step closer to admitting that it is true.

I watch the door, thinking she will walk through it, expect to see her truck filling up half of our carport, I can’t come to terms that Piera won’t be at her post on the couch, in our bed, in my life.

Who walks away like this?  Who leaves their toothbrush and their shoes, their bicycles and their protein powder, their alarm clock and their facial cream?  Who steps neatly out of a life that two people built, together?

I don’t know.  And that’s a big part of the question for which right now, there may not be an answer.  Really? (the question goes) – the answer, is obviously, yes.  Yes, or I wouldn’t have been on the biopsy table alone, wouldn’t have spent these nights in tears, wouldn’t even be writing this, right now.  So if really, yes, and it seems like so, then how?  When did it start?  How much of our love was real?  Where was the lie?  What was the mechanics of you walking away, of the toothbrush left in sink and the lonely pillow by the bed?  When did the rot begin and how much of what we built was to last?  Any of it?  None?  Some untrustworthy middle ground in between?

And once through the how and the why and the which was a lie, then who?  You?  How can I trust again, knowing I was so placidly, incredibly, wrong?  Who have I lived with all these years, where is she now, what does that leave me with for a future?  You?  The one I could finally trust, at long last different, done right, in addition to plenty of love, a whole lot of like, you?  YOU?  

On some level I don’t believe it, can’t believe it, life without my Bun, how could this possibly be true?