Get Me Out Of Here

An Open Letter: (to the husband, or the Universe, or whoever...)

We need to put this house on the market. 

Now.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a housewife.  I am not married to this house.  (I’m not sure what I’m married to, any more, but that’s a different letter.)

It cannot be me who rolls out the vacuum cleaner after I’ve been away for a week and has to suck up three inches of pet hair off of…everything in the house.

It cannot be me who scrubs every toilet, organizes every closet, and throws away every ancient leftover.    

It cannot be me who has to load and run the dishwasher that has not been run since I left the house on business five days ago.

It cannot be me who has to worry about painting four decks and a fence, controlling weeds, planting bushes for curb appeal, prettying up the yard so it’s actually a nice place to sit…(then again, I’m the only one who sits out there…but if that’s going to be the case, I need a much smaller space to tend for my own personal enjoyment.)

I am 62 years old.  I have the aches and pains and creaks and squeaks of a 62-year-old body that has been rode kinda hard and put away kinda wet.  This body is no longer adequate to the task of being the sole caretaker of a 2200 square foot house and a ¼ acre of suburban property.  If it ever was.  And while there may have been a time when my “nesting” instinct imparted a desire to maintain and decorate a space of this size, those days are way gone.  We’ve been here long enough to know that we’re not keeping up this oversized house so that we can entertain family, friends, or out-of-town guests.  Our closest family lives a hundred miles away, we have no friends, and my niece visits from Wisconsin every two or three years.  If that. 

The resident sister hides in her bedroom 90% of the time she’s here, and the husband would as soon live like a bachelor.  I don’t think he notices the difference between a clean, orderly space and…not.

So what the fuck am I doing?????

It’s too much.

I can’t do it any more.

I don’t WANT to do it anymore.   

I’m done.