A House is Not A Home

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but for some reason our house hadn’t felt like a home in a long time. Was it the broken dimmer switch in the living room? The leaky faucet in the upstairs bathroom? The overgrown garden? It was all of the above and yet something much deeper. Does a house stop being a home the moment the relationship is over or long before that? Does home stop existing the moment your lover gives love to someone else?

I didn’t understand why we’d spent last fall having all these fights about Twitch. It didn’t add up. Why was I having to fight for time with him? What I didn’t know at the time was that in a home across the bay, the exact same arguments were taking place between another couple about Dear.

I should have been happy for Dear. He was so excited to have a new friend. He claimed Twitch was turning out to be the best friend he’d made in years. Since he’d moved to San Francisco. Now Dear has many, many friends in SF and many people that care for him. After all, he’s a very charismatic and generous, if troubled, soul. He’s the sort of person that lights up the room when he enters, whether you want that glare of not.I sensed that something was different about this friendship but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He claimed Twitch was the first person he’d met that reminded him of his two best friends back on the East Coast. What he really meant was that Twitch was a big kid and encouraged his fantasies around recapturing his youth. A youth that his two friends on the East Coast had figured prominently in. I like these two friends but they are a study. Not at all alike but somehow they have managed to get into their forties without ever having a serious relationship.

I sensed something was wrong. Dear had become so volatile that, at times, I just tried to avoid the confrontations. This avoidance behavior of mine dated back to a period almost two years earlier. I had taken a severance package from a job I’d been at for years and decided to take some time off to write a book. We made the decision together and Dear was very supportive of this. At first. Then it slowly turned sour and he would get very disturbed about the bills and how he was carrying the entire financial weight of our life. True but also, he had at no time curtailed any of his extravagance. We bought three investment properties during this time. Three! He created an elaborate 40th birthday event for family and friends. We traveled. We entertained. Basically, we lived life as we always had yet now he had a focus to complain about our spending without actually addressing the issue of poor financial planning.

When I started to look for work I didn’t realize how long it would take me, being that I’m in a rather specialized sector. I knew I’d be in a good position when I did get back to work and that’s exactly what happened. However, during those final months of searching he’d grown into such an emotional roller coaster that I did anything to keep him on an even keel. I’d carefully screen the bills and try to present them in stages so as not to have to deal with a scene. In retrospect, I realize I was living through a mild form of emotional abuse but the problem is that often when you’re in situations of that sort, you don’t see it for what it is until you’re on your way out (or it’s grown so unbearable that you need escape). Thank god it never got bad. It was more like a year of walking on eggshells. Not pleasant but tolerable.

When I started back to work I thought everything would go back to normal but instead he got moodier and more irritable. This also happened to coincide with the beginning of his “friendship” with Twitch. Was it guilt the caused those reactions? Did our troubles drive him to seek companionship with someone that was “easy” and had no expectations of him? I know that it was a strange year. Now I realize I was feeling him leave in stages. Little by little, over the year, I felt him slip away and yet I couldn’t put my finger on what was happening. I hate to be the cliche of the spouse that can’t see what’s right under their eyes but that’s exactly who I was. Once he confessed, everything fell into place. Those feelings of having to fight for time with Dear. The rants whenever I didn’t want us to do something with Twitch and Mortimer or didn’t want Dear to go away with Twitch. Every nuance of the past nine months came into focus. The overwhelming feeling that I was the only person in my relationship. The only one living in our home.

And now, I am the only person living in our home. But I’ve gotten my eviction notice. Dear says I have to move out on April 1st so he and Twitch can move in. It seems that Twitch can’t bear to spend any more time living in a sublet so I have to move on. Not at my pace but at their selfish timetable. Dear says he’ll do anything he can to help me physically and financially to smooth the transition (and sooth his guilt). If I don’t leave on April 1st, he insists he’ll go crazy and Twitch will leave him. I told him that’s really not my concern and I also told him that if Twitch really cared about him so much he’d realize that Dear and I have a life to unravel and that takes some time and he would be willing to sit tight in a sublet for a few months more if it makes the separation process easier for Dear and I. After all it’s been six years. If we were getting divorced I’d have more than two and half months to get my life together. But I’m dealing with two adolescents that want their creature comforts. They can have the house but it’ll never be a home again.

I don’t know where I’m going. I know I’ll be taking things from our house but I’ll have to create my home from scratch.