The House

I went to the house after work today, a cold, dreary, rainy, late spring day. I went to pick up my mail. I knew he wouldn't be there today, on the heels of another excuse for not finishing the work still left undone.

Today I found the overgrown grass up to my knees in the backyard, a front yard covered with muddy dirt filling in sunken spaces, my beloved childhood tree obsessively trimmed even further and looking like a sick scarecrow gasping for breath, my garbage pail filled with cigarette butts in the middle of the driveway. Daggers to my heart as the outside not too long ago was my pride and joy, and a part of who I was. Now, the outside of my house has the appearance of an abandoned rental property, and I am embarrassed. 

If I had any tears left, I would have cried. Long since used up on dumpsters full of life long possessions and pieces of the only house I ever knew as home, no tears come anymore. I often wonder if that house will ever be a home again, or did all the love and laughter wash away forever with everything else that flowed into the dumpsters and out of my life. 

It's his trophy house now, what he wanted it to be, to pad his resume and his ego I suppose. And such disregard too for many of my cherished possessions, found left to rot out in the elements, somehow miraculously escaping the dumpsters in the first place just to meet a similar end.

I know there are not always happy endings, no matter how much we wish it so. Some endings are painful and only slowly fade into the past as the days and months and years continue to pile on. I think that is what this ending will be like.

There will have been many lessons to learn. The one I want to remember above all, is this.  There are people worth trusting in this world. I will not let this experience change me. I will not allow bitterness to stop me from ever trusting anyone again.

One day he will get out of my house and my life. And hopefully both me, and my scarecrow tree, will be able to breathe again.