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I’m going through a divorce and I might lose my house.

I have hesitated to share this news with anyone outside of my close circle because I don’t want anyone to pity me, and also, writing it down, telling it to people- it turns it real in a way that feels irreversible. Like once I give breath to the possibility, it’s wheels are set in motion and what happens is out of my control- talking about something gives it a body. But I also know that sharing is healing for me, and writing can be cathartic.

I am searching for some peace.

I grew up poor, living in shitty apartments my mom did her best to fancify. I never knew a plain white wall in my life, ours were always painted, adorned with framed pictures of beaches, porcelain masks with ribbons curling down, strands of wicker molded into some kind of abstract shape (it was the 80s). The decoration was supposed to distract us from the fact that our apartments had roach problems, or no hot water, or carpets so old, stained and dusty that I would sneeze uncontrollably if I sat on the floor of them for too long. But making them pretty didn’t make them ours. We could still arrive home at any time to find an eviction notice taped to our door, left by a faceless landlord.

Ironically, though we lived in such close proximity to other people, we were not the most neighborly folks. My mom was always very secretive and suspicious of others she didn’t know well, which rubbed off on me. But I do have memories about the people I grew up around, the complexes I grew up in. Deborah and her daughter Jennifer lived directly below us on Central Avenue, and we shared a phone line with them through a hole drilled into our floor. When the phone rang and it was for us, Deborah would pound our ceiling with the handle of a broom so we could pick it up. When we answered the phone and it was for them, we stomped on the oily laminate floor of our kitchen til we heard Deborah’s gruff voice on the line and we gently hung it up.

Deborah adored me and was friends with my mom for a while. She had an angry miniature Pinscher that she never walked, instead lining her small bathroom floor with newspaper that the dog would pee and poop on multiple times a day. She changed the newspaper so infrequently that in order to use the bathroom you had to tip toe across the floor carefully, maneuvering yourself around the small piles of hardened shit like minefields. My mom and her had a falling out when Deborah punished her teenage daughter for dating a black kid from her school. I remember spying on Jennifer once in the hallway of our apartment stairwell when her handsome boyfriend came to see her in secret. Her arms were around his neck, their bodies pressed close together and swaying slowly, ready to quickly break apart at the sound of Deborah’s voice booming from inside the apartment. They were beautiful and mesmerizing. I had never seen teenagers hold each other like that before.

In that same complex on Central, there was a family that moved in for a short time into one of the buildings across from us, a mother with two young boys. The woman was blind and the rumor was that she had just gotten divorced and was now living as a single parent for the first time. There were no curtains in the apartment and sometimes when my friend Lorelle and I roller skated across the uneven sidewalk, the boys would be pressed up against the window, completely naked and making faces at us, their tiny genitals smooshed and smudging the glass. The boy’s mouths were open but silent as their mom’s shadow drifted through the apartment behind them, oblivious.

There was another neighbor at a different complex who lived upstairs and catty corner to us who my mom was occasionally friendly with. I raced up the stairwell to their apartment the night I accidentally swallowed a quarter while watching Friends. My brother and I were home alone on the couch when the coin I was rolling across the slopes of my face (a thing you do when you’re bored and the internet has not yet been invented) fell into my open mouth and down my gullet. I panic swallowed to push it down into my stomach but my throat was sore and I was terrified. Carrie, the young woman who lived upstairs with her mom and brother, called an ambulance for me and the medics determined I was fine, would just need to listen for the “clink” of the coin to hit the toilet bowl over the next day or two. I was mortified, but also grateful to have been close enough to a neighbor who I was certain would not let me die.

I haven’t had downstairs or upstairs neighbors in over decade, but because I have been in this house for thirteen years (the longest I have ever lived anywhere), my relationship to my neighborhood is much different than it was when I was younger. It has taken effort not be closed off to people I don’t know, to answer the door when I am not expecting anyone and smile at people on the street even when I’m in a bad mood. But I have gotten better. It’s easier to do when you have been firmly planted for a while, have a stake in the neighborhood and aren’t beholden to a landlord. When I moved here, the family a couple streets over had a toddler and a sweet baby in a stroller who looked like a little doll. I was slow to warm up to them, for no other reason than simply the habit of being guarded. Now that baby is 11, I’ve taught her how to sew, and we send each other pictures of our most recent manicures. Her mother, Cyndi, has become one of my most cherished friends.

I also got friendly with Reg and his sweet dog once me and my ex moved here, mourning the dog’s life when an unexpected illness forced him to put her down some time later. Last year when we ran into each other on my final walk with Rosie, he cried with me in the street as I told him she had to be put down. I tearfully told him that I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to her on her final day earth side, but had been given an hour to spend with her before her euthanization a few days later. Reg pet Rosie’s soft fur as she and his puppy sniffed each other. He told her she was a good girl, said how happy he was that he got to say goodbye. I was so grateful that Reg took a moment to sit in the grief with me. Such an intimate thing to do with someone you don’t know that well, but he didn’t hesitate. I guess that’s what being a good neighbor looks like.

Owning a house is the only thing I dreamed of as a little girl. Not being rich, or famous, not having a wedding, not becoming a mother, but owning my home. It’s an incredible feat to make your lifelong dream come true, and I am endlessly proud of the accomplishment. I paid for this house with money from my first job in television, a job that threatened to wreck my self esteem and made me question my place in the industry for all five seasons. This house has made that job seem worth the sacrifice.

I have built the furniture in this house, including a 4 piece bookshelf, a tiled bathroom vanity, and a farmhouse dining table covered in nicks and water stains and errant pen marks that anchors me no matter what mood I am in.

I have nurtured my life force in this house, a connection to art and making that has transformed from a hobby to a kind of ethos, a spirituality I am now devoted to.

I have sung and danced and laughed, oh my god, how I have laughed in this house.

I have experienced new depths of love for others, and also for myself, in this house.

I have made a movie in this house.

I have torn down a life in this house.

I have picked up the pieces and started building again in this house.

I have fancified this house’s walls, built shelves, hung up art, stenciled it’s floors, Kon-Mari’ed it’s insides, plastered over holes, hung up plants, saved it from flooding, protected it from fire. I’ve dreamed of it’s potential and savored it’s actuality. I’ve celebrated and grieved, shared delicious secrets and uttered painful truths. I haven’t danced naked in the front window, smudging the glass with my body, but I still have time.

As I prepare myself for the possibilities of how my future may look, I am reminded that this house didn’t arrive finished, custom built for all my memories and growth spurts and learning curves. The love I’ve poured into it and the love I have experienced within its walls is with me always. My young self thought that a deed with my name on it would give me an intractable sense of security, something to forever rely on, a stability I was desperate for when my childhood felt chaotic and out of my control. I realize now that it doesn’t work that way- land cannot be owned, and a house is not as strong as the calamities that can threaten it.

But I am.

I am the home.

I am gonna work really hard to keep this house.

But I am the home ❤️

Thanks so much for reading.