Today he closes on the house in Keller. Old prophet friends dub me ‘Suburban Housewife’, and then I consider never talking to them again. The chances of me bumping into them are…never now… No! I AM ‘Suburban Housewife.’ I choose it. It is what I will be, so fuck you. And so I begin my 6th life, and my third move in one year. March 1, all of that stops. The Ides of March…

For the past two nights I have had dreamt the ghosts of boyfriends past. I am always disappointed to see them, and usually there is no escape route. They are working the counter at my favorite café, they are walking toward me on an empty street, they are always turning up in my way. I am dreading who will make a show tonight, but already the very worst is already behind me. The worst is behind me.

I am overhearing a co-worker work through his divorce. ‘I know the outcome isn’t what we wanted, but are you saying we should never have bothered trying?’ I hear him speak deeply into his work phone. I hear his second line buzz. He takes the call. Trying is over.

Since I have made this decision to ‘settle down’, to start on collecting things, and spend entire weekends in Home Depots…now it seems that I am flooded with advise… Single renting people get very little advise because no one can quite relate. You are either a goddess or a doormat, and either way unapproachable. Now, the refrigerator repairman thinks I should be married, and my co-workers think that I’d be a fool to buy my floors from anyone BUT Lumber Liquidators.
What I can do is take a deep breath, choose four earth tones from the Loft Line in the display and hand them over to the paint desk with directives on flat and semi-gloss. As I let go of the little cards I think aloud, ‘Under this light they seem a bit different somehow…’ The clerk snatches them up and turns away from me. She can spot my kind a mile away. She can’t be over 20.

At least Chris is here with me.