Home at Last

So first of all, I want to thank all of you for your support a week ago. I needed it so much, and even though I only know most of you from online, I consider myself blessed to have this wonderful community in my life. Especially last weekend. So a HUGE thank you to all of you who commented.


So now to the present. I'd love to say that now that we've finally got the house we so fought for, we're going around with ethereal smiles etched on our faces, and all is peaceful and calm. NOT! It's still super stressful. Part of it is that we had to move in three days, and unpacking when everything had to be moved that fast, well, is extremely unpleasant. At least for me with my less than superior organization skills (or ability to keep on task), and yes, I have been given a deadline, ugh! But also, besides that, there's just so much to do. Jay has been working nonstop in between work on fixing everything that needs fixing and helping to make this more our home, but the reality is we're going to be needing to do a lot of work to this place, for a little while. And we're going to be under pressure for at least that long. It's going to continue to be hard. On both of us.


So...how to cope, how to cope...right now I'm taking a few minutes from my part of it, the massively overwhelming stress of unpacking boxes, cleaning things, and wondering how IN THE WORLD I'm going to keep this place up without getting in trouble every day (it's at least twice as big as the house we were renting, maybe three times as big) to stop and reflect on what this all means, really means. To prevent me from losing  perspective.


This is our house. This is OUR house. As in, we're not renting it, we own it. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that fact. You see, neither I nor Jay ever thought we'd actually have this one day. I mean, we'd hope, but never expect it to truly happen. After all, neither of us have ever known stability since we were born.


For me, when I exited the foster care system at the age of eighteen and got thrown out into the world, I had no idea how difficult it would be, how much I didn't know, how unprepared I was. Because of my particular experiences, with a lot of things it was like picking up where I left off learning things at the age of five. I excelled at school, so I hid there in college. The outside world was beyond overwhelming. but anything school, that world I understood. Even in the midst of college life, though, I was learning concepts that everyone else seemed to take for granted, that they'd known for years and years. But I still thought by the time I graduated I'd be ready for the outside world. Caught up, ya know?


It wasn't until I didn't have that safety net of school anymore, that I discovered how behind I really was. Whereas I thought that if I had a degree, I'd become a working professional, and finally be, or more accurately finally feel, as normal as everyone else, reality, of course, was shockingly different, as I tried to fit into a world I didn't understand. And I realized that being a foster kid didn't stop just because I was out of the system. I realized why the majority of us end up in jail, or on the streets, or even dead.


Now yes, I've been blessed with so much that has helped me navigate through all this. Even so, sometimes there's this feeling, when you're from a life like mine, that you may never have the life that other's have, that you're always in a state of constant catch-up learning things that everyone else seems to know. And to prevent it from affecting your self esteem, eventually you just have to make the decision to stop comparing yourself to others and just accept it. To realize your journey is different that others, and just appreciate what you have achieved, and how far you've come, rather than focusing on what you may be still lacking.


Jay, for his part, actually had things way worse than me. He never thought he would live to see the age of thirty, much less have a family and now a house. When someone grows up in his situation, it's almost impossible to figure a way out. And yeah, had it not been for me, and a LOT of intervention from God, I don't think he would have. He was used to working as hard as he could and still it not being enough. As hard as he fought to make his life better, he was used to being screwed over by everyone, and things falling through. I don't think he even believed that I would become truly his until we were actually saying our vows. There was still that nagging feeling that some last minute thing would happen that would prevent his happiness, just like it always had. That was pretty much the only reality he'd known before I entered his life. The thought of all he's been through still brings me to tears.


Even after we found each other, though, we've still had to fight for everything we have. Nothing has come easy for us, ever. I could write a book about our adventures together, we've been through so much, never giving up, always supporting each other through each new thing.


But now, wow, today has happened. Today we have a house to call our own. We have stability, for the first time in our lives. It's a staggering thought, a dream come true. No one would ever know, looking at our lives now, where we've come from. We own a home. We have a family. We actually want to have foster kids too, now that we have the space. And I think right now both of us feel for the first time, well, for lack of a better word, normal.


It's a pretty dang cool feeling. :)