After two days of talking it over, Aaron and I have decided we’re going to take a step back from living together, each have our own place through this winter and spring (me in New Orleans, him in Houston), and use the time and space to sort out our personal belongings and decide what is really important to each of us. We both have accumulated an overwhelming amount of ‘stuff’, currently spread out between two homes, two large storage rooms and a storage container in Tomball and our goal is to try and consolidate it into the square footage of a normal to small home so that we will have the ability to travel and move with ease when we do find a place we want to call home.
We spent the last 3-4 months researching and dealing with people long distance attempting to purchase a home and start a business in California and though we did everything we were supposed to have the people we dealt with were unprofessional, disorganized and the stress and logistics were just too much to manage properly. So we’re both going to have some peace and quiet and space to organize and work on sorting our own lives out. I’ll get to know what it’s really like to live in New Orleans for more than a week and indulge my childhood fascination with the city, Aaron is planning a solo cross country RV/camping trip when he finishes selling his excess stuff, so everyone’s happy. And I can still come to Houston to see him and my family and friends, and he can come see me and Phoebe in NOLA.
I turn 50 in January, I have done hardly any real traveling in my life, have never lived outside of Texas, and would really like to see the world through Aaron’s inquisitive eyes. Yes, I’m weird, we’re a weird couple, we both have a lot of baggage, we’ve had some communication problems, but we have a strange understanding that works for both of us, we share a bizarre sense of humor that makes me extremely happy and I honestly can’t imagine my life without him. I’ve been learning how to live out of a duffle bag for the first time in my life this past year, so living in two cities will be the next challenge, and should be a hell of a lot of fun.
For everyone who has been worried about me, I really do appreciate your concern and advice and am sorry to be so flaky and emotional. I think I was looking for an excuse to leave my job, which i couldn’t do without jeopardizing our home search and used our latest argument as an excuse to leave. My knee jerk reaction to the stress over losing the home in California that we worked on for so many months was unfair and hurtful to Aaron and it was also illogical, and my brain went into the same pattern it did when I left my ex-husband, which was easy because I already had so many things packed and in storage. But shipping everything I own to Louisiana would be insanely expensive, keeping all of our extra ‘stuff’ in storage is just unhealthy, so we’re both looking forward to downsizing and simplifying both of our lives. It will be hard and at times frustrating to get to the goal we’re striving for, but it will be a major life learning experience. And education, enlightenment, adventure and fun are my goals for my, our, next decade.
Now, the hard part, going off to work after a week in New Orleans and 48 hours with Aaron…
