saying goodbye to the Magee B&B

As the saying goes, if you love something set it free. This Valentine's Day we set free what we loved the most. Something that has been both a burden and a blessing, a source of pride as well as the cause of a lot of angst. Love will do that to you - cause you to love and be in pain at the same time. The letting go was a mostly mutual decision and, like all good-bye's this was the best decision. Now we are both free to move on and explore what else is out there.

Yes, friends, my husband and I closed on and sold our house.

I have been warned not to fall in love with real estate before because you'll only get your heart broken. When I saw our house for the first time though, I fell in love and there was no turning back. The hardwood floors, the spacious kitchen, granite counter tops and new appliances and carpet were all so appealing. Three beautiful aspen trees out front -my favorite tree - seemed to be practically begging me to make them mine. There was a fenced in back yard, five bedrooms and two bathrooms and a park at the end of the street. You couldn't ask for a better spot to live or more friendly neighbors. We closed and moved in about this time 4 years ago and it's been one hell of a ride ever since. Love is not without its flaws. Love will make you blind.

Like any relationship, the newness faded and the house became more of a burden than a blessing. After my maternity leave last year we never quite financially recovered and reality set in about our future together. My husband and I are the type of people who have wanderlust. We love to travel, explore new countries and cities and spend our nights camping under the starts in the summer. We have always lived in small spaces from a 400 square foot studio apartment to a 900 square foot house. This 2,600 square foot house we owned gave us space to roam but only within the confines of its walls. The house was an anchor and it was drowning us. That's how relationships become sometimes - they smother you, weigh you down, cause you anxiety and hold you hostage. We saw our future together and it became clear that we were no longer good for each other. Time to move on.

There were many tears of course as there always are when you're breaking up. We questioned ourselves and if we were making the right decision. One night while packing my husband pointed out that it wasn't important that we were leaving the house because we got to keep what was inside. "The house is just a shell to hold all of our stuff. We get to take everything with us when we go" he said. This statement made me realize that most of life is made up of shells and containers with which we hold our treasures. Wooden frames hold our pictures of moments we want to remember. Bindings of books hold the words of our favorite stories. Our heart is a muscle that holds all our love and feelings inside. The body is a shell in which the soul resides. When we leave this earth we have to leave the vehicle that drove our soul around behind, but the most important part of us moves on. What stays in one place decays.

Without movement there is decay and stagnation. What sits in one space for too long eventually becomes obsolete or dies. When water becomes stagnate it becomes full of bacteria and turns brown and murky. Our bodies are made up of mostly water and I have to think the same thing happens to us when we stop moving and stop going with the flow. For four years we stayed in one spot and you wouldn't believe what we accumulated. A lot had to be thrown away, most went in storage and only a small relevant part holds a space in our new place now with us. We could have stayed in that one house the rest of our lives and never known the world outside those walls. But we are not people who like to remain still and our urge to be free was too strong to deny.

Two of the aspen trees in front of our house eventually died and we had to cut them down. To me it was a sign from the universe that if we stayed too long our fate might be the same. We'd live and die in one space and only our stumps would remain...an empty shell of what was once beautiful. Now we are free to seek out the beauty of the world, to wander for as long as we like and to find a new shell to call home.

We're free. What a relief.