Yesterday I walked through my house for the last time. By the close of business today it will no longer be mine, and I’m really okay with that. In fact, I’m glad. It took a long time to sell that house, and I’m ready to move on.

Why, then, did I lose it when I said goodbye to the house yesterday? You would think I would have been doing the happy dance out the door, but nope, I was boo hooing instead.

Maybe it was the heat. After all it was 107 degrees out yesterday (yes, literally) and we worked all day packing up the last odds and ends and cleaning up after ourselves. Two trips to storage with random items and then two carloads at the end to take to our temporary home took its toll in the heat, right?

Or it could have been that I was just plain tired. Friday night I was up late preparing for the movers, who arrived very early on Saturday. The whole weekend was a whirlwind of activity with not enough rest. Maybe that’s what lead to my emotional state.

Then again, it could have been the relief that I felt that we were finally closing the door to this chapter so we could move on to the next. The development that is being built across the street is moving along, and I feel like we’re getting out in the nick of time. That’s not really the case, after all it’s not a detox center for psychotic baboons or anything like that, but it is an eyesore.

I’m sure that all of those factors came into play, but what hit me hardest were the memories that we made in that house. We weren’t there long, just two and a half years, but we lived there at a huge transitional time in my life. I was on my own after a long marriage ended, and I was starting a new relationship with the man I wish I had met twenty years sooner (but neither of use was ready for the other then, so it all worked out). My son and I moved in on our own and made the place ours. I wrote the manuscript for my first novel in that house. We celebrated birthdays and Christmas and even Thanksgivukkah there! That house was a haven and I will always remember it with fondness.

I guess it’s not surprising that the tears started flowing yesterday. They say that moving is one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. It seems silly in my case, since I moved by choice, but it still took its toll. Thankfully I have a little time to recover before we close on our new house and do it all again. Somehow, though, I don’t think there will be any tears on that particular moving day, unless they’re tears of relief and joy.