Home Is...

When J and I met at work and started dating, we were both homeowners.  Only we lived in two different states, 45 miles apart.  It was challenging to spend time together.  We had abbreviated weekends, and on a good week when our schedules fell into place, we could meet on neutral turf for a nice dinner after work.  About a year into the relationship, J decided to sell his house of about 15 years, and moved into an apartment much closer to work- and me.  Once we were married another year later, we started our new life together in my house.  My very little cozy starter home, which I'd purchased with W.  The ghosts haunted me, not to mention having J's living room furniture shoved into a tiny spare bedroom.  He was perfectly content to stay there, I wanted out- out from under the bad memories and out from under two complete households' worth of furnishings crammed into 1300 square feet.

We bought our new house a few months after we got married, at the height of the market in 2006.  We bought it the week it hit the internet listings, and we paid full asking price for it.  It was older but remodeled, in a beautiful wooded neighborhood that everyone was trying to elbow their way into, and it oozed charm and character from every corner.  It was my dream home, I knew I wanted it just from the pictures online.  Luckily my old house sold quickly, and I made a great profit on it.  And a small inheritance from one of J's relatives, that we immediately put on the mortgage, and we had great equity. We got to enjoy it all of two years.  In 2008 when J was offered a promotion, I was not going to say no.  Although I knew I had to leave behind my home, my friends, my job.  He was the bread winner and my husband, and his career was important to us both.  He's an executive making six figures, I was an hourly cubicle slave- we had to go where his career path led us.

At his level, the company takes care of it all.  They picked the realtor to sell our old house.  They chose our realtor who would sell us a new house, in a new city we had never even been to before.  We had one weekend to swoop in and look at houses and decide.  Talk about pressure!  J had to move immediately, while I stayed behind to tie up loose ends- packing, my job, saying goodbye to friends.  J lived in a furnished apartment- courtesy of the company and his relocation package- and after three months we purchased our current home and I was able to move to this new town, new state at the end of 2008.  My depression worsened as soon as we crossed state lines and ended up here.  We don't love our new house, although it was brand new and we got it for a great price.  It's big with white walls, no trees in the yard, and two empty lots across the street- reminders that the builder went bankrupt with only 2/3 of the subdivision completed.  We've made a few changes here and there, but the house is somewhat boring and after 3 1/2 years we still don't even know any of our neighbors' names.  Work is a 40-minute commute.  We live right outside of a large major city that offers anything we could want, we just don't have the time to go enjoy it very often.

Now J has another promotion possibility looming over him, one he will have to decide about in the next few weeks.  It would mean going through all of this again- living apart for several months, giving up my job, moving to yet another state, settling into another house.  We just don't know if we want to do it all over again.  But we know the only way J will ever get another promotion is if we move- there's no opportunity for him to move up the company ladder where we are right now.  We have no personal or emotional ties to where we live- this house, the town, acquaintances who have never really become friends.  Yet the idea of starting from scratch one more time, at our age, I just am very unsure.  One side of me is excited at the possibilities it might bring, the other side dreads the idea that things could get worse.

I leave the decision up to J, because his career is the cornerstone of everything that we have and we do.  My job is just a paycheck, it means nothing to me and I actually hate it, and I already left all my true friends behind the first time we moved.  I have been unhappy living here, but I am not sure that moving again will solve anything for me.

MISS GEE