I have my own life

And I am stronger

Than you know

But I carry this feel­ing

When you walked into my house

That you won't be walk­ing out the door

-Ste­vie Nicks

A poster from a show by a small-time metal band I've never seen hangs in my spare room. It's of a con­quis­ta­dor skele­ton on an ab­stract back­ground, a gift from an ex-boyfriend that re­mains one of the sin­gle best gifts I've ever re­ceived. He cor­rectly guessed my fa­vorite from all the posters wheat pasted to the wall of the only good music venue in town. There aren't many relics in my house from the boys who have come and gone. For one, none of them are saints, and for an­other he's the only one I'll al­ways love a lit­tle.

Re­la­tion­ships are rooms oc­cu­pied by the peo­ple in­volved. At best, they are dec­o­rated by two in­di­vid­u­als deeply in love and pre­cisely in sync, each bring­ing ar­ti­facts from their pasts and trea­sures from their hope chests. These are the homes dec­o­ra­tors would call "or­ganic" rather than "cu­rated," warm and wel­com­ing with a feel­ing of fam­ily and his­tory and ha­bit­ual use. At worst, the room is lit­tered with the clut­ter of the past, with exes like awk­ward rock­ing chairs built for worry and stub­bing your toe on in the dark. These rooms can be en­tered into to­gether, or can merely be a cor­ner of your larger life that some­one strays into briefly for a time. The mo­ment some­one walks in the door can be as sig­nif­i­cant as when Ste­vie Nicks first met Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham at a Cal­i­for­nia high school party. The mo­ment some­one walks out can feel as dev­as­tat­ing as Sid Vi­cious leav­ing Room 100 at the Chelsea Hotel.

I bought a lit­tle or­ange bun­ga­low a few months ago after the breakup of a one-year re­la­tion­ship. I didn't know it at the time, but re­al­ized weeks later I went through with the sale be­cause I was tired of wait­ing. I was tired of wait­ing on love, tired of wait­ing to come home. For ten years I've be­lieved in the Bruce Spring­steen fan­tasy that love be­gins on the run and ends in a promised land. If love was true, my man and I would build some­thing beau­ti­ful and im­mov­able. We would be pi­o­neers fi­nally set­tling on the edges of the prairie, our farm­house still stand­ing one hun­dred years later as a cathe­dral to toil and love.

My exes and I, we con­ducted our re­la­tion­ships at our par­ents' houses, in dorm rooms and dingy apart­ments, in the homes of room­mates and past and fu­ture lovers. We went to cof­fee shops and con­cert halls, back seats and brew­houses, tawdry mo­tels and smart down­town suites in dis­tant cities. I've been so many places with these boys, every­where but home. We've never built any­thing to last. I signed lease after lease, keep­ing my op­tions open, stay­ing pur­posely root­less in case love needed me to take root some­where else. After a decade of liv­ing in other peo­ple's homes, I was tired. I was tired of wait­ing for some­one to join me when I could build some­thing spe­cial for my­self. I was tired sim­ply of wait­ing at all.

My house was built in 1920. It has a low front porch and a small front yard, per­fect for the South­ern pas­time of porch-sit­ting and say­ing hello to pass­ing neigh­bors. Its win­dows are the orig­i­nal wavy glass, dis­tort­ing your view in the most de­light­ful way, cast­ing rain­bows on the bed­spread in the af­ter­noon. Though it's not a large house, it gives you a sense of wan­der­ing, the lay­out takes a me­an­der­ing path that is sat­is­fy­ing to walk through. The rooms are square and com­fort­ing, but are well-sized. In other words, it is per­fectly pro­por­tioned for a young, sin­gle pro­fes­sional and a small grey cat who are tired of tiny apart­ments and short re­la­tion­ships.

This is a house that has known many long and happy lives, some of which prob­a­bly began and ended on the premises. I have a hard time imag­in­ing invit­ing a lover here be­cause this house is so en­twined with my­self that merely ask­ing some­one to cross the thresh­old would be an im­mensely in­ti­mate act. Re­la­tion­ships are rooms we build to­gether, a del­i­cate ar­chi­tec­ture that may or may not stay in fash­ion or up to code, that may one day be razed to make room for some­thing new. Whether phys­i­cal or metaphoric, we all need shel­ter, a place to im­print upon and that can mark us in re­turn.

In the back of my house, as in the back of my mind, is this soli­tary sou­venir from a place and time with the boy who made the biggest im­pres­sion. It hangs on the wall, mixed in with pieces of my child­hood and young adult­hood and hand-me-downs from my par­ents. This place is mine now, filled with my small per­sonal his­tory. This house and I are mak­ing an im­pres­sion on each other day by day. We are tak­ing up more and more space within one an­other. To sim­ply have room for my things, to pick out paint col­ors and spread out while I cook, my pulse main­tains a slower pace. At night I lay in bed and lis­ten to my fa­vorite al­bums, in case the house has not heard them be­fore. Some­times it sings back, creak­ing and whistling as it set­tles and ad­justs to changes in tem­per­a­ture and weather. I play it love songs, and in re­turn it sings me lul­la­bies.

There is the ar­chi­tec­ture of a re­la­tion­ship, but also a re­la­tion­ship with ar­chi­tec­ture. This house is more than its plas­ter lath walls and slop­ing heart pine floors-- it is where I first in­vested sig­nif­i­cantly in my re­la­tion­ship with my­self. Per­haps one day some­one will walk in, see what I've built, and de­cide to add on, to mix their things and his­tory with mine. Per­haps he and I will move on some­where new to­gether, seek­ing a new fron­tier. Per­haps this is sim­ply where I was meant to be alone, but not lonely. One thing’s for sure, if a day does come that some­one walks into my house, I carry a feel­ing they won't be walk­ing out the door.

There aren't many relics in my house - Skye Bacus