The Dream is Over
What can I say?
It was supposed to be a quiet farewell; picking up the last pieces I couldn’t fit in the car off the porch of the Silverlake craftsman home that is no longer mine after my final walkthrough on Tuesday.
I brought my camera, hoping to document what I had left the same way I had documented my arrival: the open living and dining room space, the perfect place to finally hang the Slim Aarons I'd kept rolled up in a cardboard tube for two years, the grape vines that I ate off of before the landlord even arrived, the lawn. Documenting the loss of what I believed— and was— a better life for myself.
Instead, I pulled into the driveway that was still mine a mere two days after I moved out, to find my landlords on the porch with my now former next door neighbor/ex-boyfriend and his new wife negotiating for my home.
Once again witnessing my erasure,
as I have for nearly two years.
And as horrible as it is to have that last image of driving away from my home of twelve years— the home I spent every last dollar I had on from the moment I moved in to the moment I moved out, the home that meant the fucking world to me— quickly packing my car and driving away while I watch them inspect it all like he hasn’t been in that home a thousand times and only imagining the shit she will be talking about it because I know her well enough to know the shit she talks and, FINE.
I already gave everything I could.
So, by all means take it all.
I built multiple lives there.
And died twice as many times.
So put the last nail in the coffin.
Burn it down for me.
Then I never have to look back.
While you'll always have to live with
the ghost of what it was
when I lived there.
And so dear friends, we’ll just have to carry on. The dream is over.