It didn't take as long to pack up as I thought it would. After all the fights, the headaches, the endless back and forth over who was right or wrong... it's proven surprisingly easy to pack up a life.
It helps, I suppose, that I didn't have much to begin with. I wasn't like my mother in that respect – I never regarded dainty filigree jewellery and expensive perfumes as proof of love, I was never into all that stuff.
This is my third and final trip back to the house. Almost everything has been cleared away by now.
Evan isn't here. We both agreed it would be best if we packed our things on different days, so we wouldn't have to run into one another. It was the most practical thing to do, we felt.
Only the bedroom remains to be done – though I see when I walk in that Evan has made a start already. Our blankets are folded neatly on each side of the bed, the pillows are nice and plump. They'll look perfect when the house viewings begin. Neat and tidy. No fuss, no mess. Everything our life together was not.
Somehow, this thought is the one that makes me crumble.
I don't know why - I've been holding it together for months now. I didn't cry when we first decided it was the end of the road for us. I was too tired for any sort of strong reaction by then. I was ready for it all to be over, ready to stop pretending our marriage was still fit for purpose when it clearly wasn't. I sat through a series of interminably dull meetings with lawyers and realtors – Evan right across the table from me, usually – and I remained perfectly composed through it all.
But now, with the perfectly folded blankets in front of me, I find I can no longer stay upright. I'm sinking to the floor, my eyes filled with tears.
The day we officially bought this house – when Evan suggested, with a mischievous grin, that our first order of business should be to test the durability of the new bed. The lazy Sunday mornings curled up under our blankets, listening to the rain falling above our heads. The night my mother died, when he held onto me for dear life as I howled and screamed at the injustice of it all. The struggles to conceive that never bore fruit. The false hope we would cling to – whenever my period seemed to be running late – that would invariably end with the familiar sight of blood. The first time I decided I would stop bothering to tell him whenever I was running late – there was no point, I thought, in dragging both of us through yet another cycle of elation and despair. I would do it alone and let him know after the fact. The arguments we began to have over that. The sighs, the irritation, the terse monosyllabic conversations borne of repeated disappointments. The way love somehow curdled into resentment and we passively accepted that as the new order of things, without either of us understanding just how bad it had gotten until it was too late to save what remained of who we used to be.
The cuddles, the laughter, the passion, the grief. All of it. Gone.
It's too much for me, and as I struggle to draw breath through my sobs and shudders, I finally understand what people mean when they say loss makes them feel as though they're drowning.
A parade of strangers will traipse through this house over the next week, assessing its features. I can already see them now: nodding approvingly at the original marble fireplaces while frowning at the stains in the living room walls, from when Evan's nieces and nephews came over and decided to test out their new crayons when no one was watching and we then had to try – with limited success – to clean it off. They'll admire the gorgeous conservatory that was put in by the people who owned this house before Evan and I did, while commenting that they're not entirely sure about the north-facing master bedroom – surely it's not best placed to receive enough sunlight?
They'll never know exactly what this house meant to me.
A response to the latest picture prompt in the A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words competition – link to the competition post here.