My heart feels a little bruised this morning. The corners of my mouth are dragging in a way I’m not usually aware of. Despite the perfect, cool temperature of the air wafting through my house and the bright sunshine I stood in before as I pulled weeds outside, there is a little pain that slows my breath this morning. I see the beauty in the shifting leaves on the trees and hear the life in the birdcalls, but my mood does not easily shift. Even watching the blur of my little dog’s five inch long legs as he trots speedily along on our morning walk doesn’t engage my interest.

I spent way too much time in the realtor’s office yesterday afternoon. My ex-husband and I had an accepted offer on our “marital house.” The house that should have sold five years ago when our divorce became final. The present deal fell through, ultimately, because the people who were buying our house lost their buyer. “However, it might not be totally lost,” the realtor says, though it seems that way to me.

My ex-husband and his girlfriend made an offer on a townhouse. The people who own the townhouse made an offer on another place. It seems the chain goes on even beyond that. Now, basically, it would appear that everyone, realtors and regular people alike, are sitting around with their proverbial thumbs up their behinds because everyone assumed the deal was going to go through, and then it didn’t. The only domino in this line I care about is my house.

It’s not really that, that has me so disturbed. We all had to be there because there were amended contracts to sign, and language changes in the MLS listing had to be agreed upon. What bugged me was sitting before we even got in the realtor’s office in the agency waiting room with my ex-husband and his girlfriend. The girlfriend blathered on the way anxious people do about how much she wanted her townhouse to go through, and how Mojo, my dog who is currently living with my ex-husband, can live in their unfenced property-less home via a long leash strung out the sliding glass door. Mojo is currently used to a dog door and a half acre of fenced yard. My ex-husband has refused to give me “our” dog.

The girlfriend, running out of things to chat about, read the town paper out loud, making fun of things in the police blotter for their insignificance compared to the larger town to which they are moving. “Really?” I thought. “You listen to this constant chatter?” I said in my head. “It must be like having the TV on 24/7 for the interest level of the content and the noise.”

My ex-husband has fallen pretty far if this is what he has to settle for as a live-in companion. She didn’t strike me as very bright, either. The only reason he is buying a townhouse with her, I realize, is because he can’t afford it 100% himself. Oh my. I see that my self-talk is not helping. As they say in a spiritual program of which I am a part, “Never go into your mind alone. It is a dangerous neighborhood.” Yes, mine is.

And that was all before we got in to talk to the realtor. I don’t know why we had to be there together except that there’s one realtor for the two deals, and revisions need to be made for the contracts on both deals.

It’s not the first time I met the girlfriend. I’m not usually so full of judgment about other people but this woman takes the cake on several levels. I’m burnt out about wanting to reach some kind of closure to a thirty year marriage. Holding on to this house even another minute is anathema to me, and I want it sold. I had to initiate a court action to even get the house back on the market.

Now I feel like I’m still unable to move on. My ex-husband has become a total stranger to me. He refuses to talk to me about anything, including the children, unless he has to. He would prefer I didn’t still exist. I dared to leave him behind, after all. Except I haven’t.

It just breaks my heart to have to still slog through this swamp of leftover and unresolved feelings, broken dreams, and marital property still to be divided. “In God’s time, not mine,” the saying goes and I get it. There have been lots of reasons to hang on to the house this long but now that it is time for it to go, I am out of patience. I want God to help me move on, and I want it yesterday.

I am the one who most desperately needs new psychic space. “Let it go, Chris,” I say to myself. “The house will sell, sooner rather than later, and these people really, really, want the house. Something will happen if you can be patient.”

Yeah, patient. “Not in my gene pool,” I think. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve worked on my spirituality, my relationship with my Higher Power, in the last few years. Some days just don’t work out the way you want them to. Some days just hurt.