It's official

Despite the emotional upheaval of separation and divorce, from a purely practical standpoint, selling my home - a large but aging condo located in a desirable section of Los Angeles - has scared me more. Perhaps it's the fact that I know my ex and I are both reasonable people, and she's not going to try fucking me over, and I have proven again and again that I'm going to take the high road through all of this. 

But selling a condo in a down market, with all of that pent up fear that my home had come to represent, was crippling. It kept me from putting it on the market until after the holidays, and then this horrible, gut-wrenching process taking 12 weeks seemed to put me in an interminable limbo. Even though we found a buyer quickly, the daily uncertainty, the serpentine regulations was even more challenging than I envisioned the whole thing to be. I don't think I would've been able to handle it without L, who was just a complete buoy in so many ways. 

And today it's done. Kind of a Mozart Moment.

I no longer own property, and I now have a very large sum of money in my bank account. It's not large by Los Angeles standards, and the sad irony is that it's not even enough for me to go jump into another property if I wanted to (which I very much DON'T right now), but it's more money than I've ever personally had in my life. An interesting feeling, though also kind of a nervous one, because I want to kind of nurture that egg so it can be of greater use down the line. It's not something to crack open, though maybe I'll rub it a little bit here and there.

I can't even begin to express the relief I feel being on the other side of this. I am so colossally happy about everything right now, and most of it is because of L. Being on the other side of the house is just icing on the cake. Of course, I'd like to be on the other official side of the marriage too, but that feels trivial by comparison. Getting two people who philosophically agree on most things to sign a bunch of papers seems a lot less daunting than finding a total stranger in a colossally nightmarish economy to buy the home that often gave you nightmares for much of the last six years. Getting a divorce seems like a dance party in comparison. At the same time, as I told my brother, it's not high on my list of things to do right now. I feel like I just climbed a treacherous, ice-slicked mountain, and the last thing I feel like doing is strapping on some snowshoes. 

I'd rather relax, smile, be happy, be in love, and live. That sounds much better to me. And it feels just a little bit easier today.