loss

 

A year ago today I walked out of the front door of my house for the very last time.

I was forced to sell it before there was a foreclosure because I wasn't able to pay the mortgage by myself and the people that had been living there with me hadn't paid any rent for months and weren't taking any steps to change that situation. I was able to hold on to it as long as I did because of COVID but those protections were coming to an end and I had no choice.

It was a painful decision to make, giving up the place I'd loved for over 20 years and the last place Taz ever lived. I had hoped that I'd be able to live there with my new family but that didn't work out because of custody issues.

If I'd listened to my mother decades ago and purchased the home owners insurance that paid the house off in the event of the death of a spouse, I'd still have the house. But I was just a young adult and the idea of death was just so far away and improbable.

Stupid, I was.

But I can't change any of it so on to the good news - we cleared out the storage unit where all of the stuff from my house had been stored for over a year! And by "we" I mean Chris did it all, just like he pretty much did a year ago when we moved it all out of the house.

Most of the boxes have gone into our spare room and I'll spend the next year few weeks going through them but the first boxes I'm going to tackle will be my books, my old friends. I figured out that I boxed these books up over 2 years ago, right before the roommates moved in when I was clearing out most of the house for them so I haven't seen these books in a very long time and I miss them.

We bought a new bookcase over the weekend and Chris and the kids surprised me by putting it together while I was driving home from work yesterday. It was such a sweet gesture because they know how much this all means to me.

Having some things from my old house/life around me again is soothing to my soul. Already some of my kitchen stuff is being put to use and some of my decor items are displayed and it makes me smile just to see it all.

It's not easy integrating two households which is probably why we put it off for so long. We've bought some new things this past year that makes some of my things not needed but luckily I work for an organization that houses the homeless so I can always donate the things that I no longer need and they will be part of a fresh start for somebody else.

As I look around at my things snuggled next to Chris's things I know that although there has been a lot of loss in my life, there has been even more gain. I have a new house that we are renovating together, a new family and definitely a new future - one I never could have imagined. There will be more tears along the way, I will always grieve for Taz and our old life but that doesn't mean I won't fully embrace my new life and create many more memories along the way.

On a related note, I REALLY miss my swimming pool especially since I just got a new swimsuit that I'm in love with. I think I see a water park visit in my future!

peace

 

Good morning from my office!

Ever since COVID we've been given the option to work from home part of the time and since I have a very long commute, I've chosen to work from home 3 days a week and in the office the other 2 days. It works out well because I find myself looking forward to my office days as a nice change of pace. I enjoy the interaction with my supervisor because there's always a lot of gossip important news to catch up on.

But my real favorite day of the week is Friday when there is nobody else in the house when I wake up and I can throw on just a shirt and panties and sit in the living room doing my work with absolute peace and quiet.

I value peace a lot, sometimes probably to my own detriment because I have often sought peace at any price. It will come as no surprise to anybody that knew him that Taz had a temper with a capital T. I did not grow up with anyone with a temper so living with Taz's frequent outbursts was an eye-opener for me. He wasn't often mad AT me but he was mad AROUND me and the volume was the same and the yelling battered my soul. I often felt like I was walking on eggshells just waiting for the next thing that set him off. I would plan every aspect of our lives down to the last detail just to make sure there was nothing to upset him but it was always the details I couldn't control that messed up that plan.

Peace is what I crave these days and I'm blessed enough to have it most of the time. No more yelling, no more anger, no more rage, no more walking on eggshells.

Chris shares many traits with Taz, I think they would have liked each other, but his most important trait is what they don't have in common - he brings me peace. He has a temper about stuff in the outside world but he never brings it home. In the almost 2 years we've been together, he's never gotten angry at me and not only that, he's encouraged me to let him know when I'm not all that thrilled with him and we talk about it and he never blames me for feeling that way. It's been refreshing.

I value peace, it's what I crave, and I used to work very hard to have it but now it just comes naturally and that's such a blessing. Our daily life is full of laughter and love and most of the drama comes from the interaction of two growing children who love each other but also get on each other's nerves. Our grownup relationship has plenty of excitement but little drama which maybe explains why when drama does happen it seems magnified for the moment. But quickly we slip back into the peaceful pattern and just enjoy each other's company.

A year ago I was getting ready to sell my house and was busy packing up the last few things. Those things have been in storage this whole time so this weekend it's going to be time to open up the boxes and incorporate more of my things into our home and get rid of the things I really don't need anymore. I think that's one of the reasons I've been feeling a little unsettled, I miss having some of my things around me, especially my books. I've been in a sort of limbo for a long while now and it's time to incorporate the old life and the new and figure out who Jonni is in 2022.

On another note - it's just 7 months until the wedding! I haven't done a lot of planning since we settled on a date and place but now it's finally time to get into high gear wedding planning mode so that's probably what my next few posts will be about.

trust

 

Many years ago Taz dropped a piece of paper on our bedroom floor and I found it. It was an email he had printed out from a former coworker and she was going to be in town (from Virginia) so they were planning on getting together for dinner. It was all innocent, her new husband was along on the trip, except that he had told me he was getting together with his friend Michael that night.

And that was the moment I stopped trusting him. 

Trust is essential in a relationship and I hated second guessing everything he said from that moment on and I truly don't believe he lied often (although there is a night when he was on a trip in Virginia and I couldn't reach him and he never called and he said he accidentally left his phone in the car but that's hard to believe and I'll always wonder if he was fucking his friend Venihlde...) but there was always that seed of doubt and I know it affected our relationship.

 I always asked myself if my life with him was better than it would be without him and the answer was always the same and I stayed and now I have a lifetime of happy memories and only a few bad ones so I can't help but believe I made the right choice.

And now I find myself in the same spot, my trust has been broken over something stupid but if lies are told over something basically (but not completely) innocent then how am I ever to trust that they're not being told over bigger things?

I have been given a guarantee that this will never happen again (and Chris's guarantees are like gold, so much stronger than a promise in his eyes) and otherwise things are great so it seems like the answer is simple...but nothing is really ever simple, is it?

In other news - I have finally gotten around to watching the 2nd season of Emily in Paris on Netflix and I want to visit Paris/France so badly!!