Closing the Door

I have closed the door on my relationship with my mother and Eric. Now our only connection is through his checkbook in regards to my car, my phone and my Internet service. My belongings have been removed from the house at Albevanna Spring, and I returned the key that has been on my keychain since I was 14. 
In truth that place has never been home to me. For all I hate the trailer and would like to demolish it in favor of another abode, it is Home. Her house was more of a storage depot, a supply closet and occasionally a place to hang out. 
Even when I actually did live there for a couple months, it wasn’t Home. 
Home is where my dogs run. Home is where I can hear Kerry talking loudly on the phone. Home is full of my treasures. Home is where I can dismantle a 1911 on the kitchen table; leave my books piled by my ‘throne’, and put whatever catches my eye on the wall. 
Many times I tried to make that place home. The room that was originally designated as mine has plenty of marks on the walls from tape and push pins, yet it was never the same as the bizarre and random collection that covers the walls in my room, and in the end, the unrelieved white won out. Instead of books in shelves, and collections of things crammed on every free surface, it was filled with plastic boxes holding the bulk of my odds and ends that no longer had a real place in my Home. My gear from various sports, my piles of clothing that I never threw out shared storage space with the treasures of my childhood that could no longer be displayed in my childhood room, simply because there was no more space. 
In truth, I don’t know if my mother even sees that place as Home. Although truth be told, I’m not sure she understands Home in the same way I do. I think I was the only one that made any effort to make that place personal, and I got into trouble when I tried. She wouldn’t let me do anything, but at the same time she made no effort either. It still has the air of a place where someone just moved in with no time to unpack, except with added piles of 10 years worth of stuff that has no where to be put away.
This has always bugged me in ways that I’m not sure I ever really explored. I think my concept of Home has much to do with it, as does my need to have a place for everything. I do not have issues with mess and disorganization as long as I can clean up the mess and organize without too much thought. My habit of periodically rearranging my own Home and my tendency to nest are at odds with her ability to ignore disarray unless she is screaming about it and the fact that I haven’t seen her make a place hers since I was a small child. I wonder now if that was only for others benefit or if at one time, such things where important to her. Perhaps it was a sign of her deteriorating ability to cope with life. 
Now that I think of it, if this is part of her deterioration, then it has become a cyclical issue. The more she feels unable to organize her personal surroundings, the more she becomes distressed, and thus she becomes even less able to do something to improve her surroundings, increasing distress and so on and so forth. 
Or perhaps I am projecting some of my issues upon her, a crime she has committed against me many times.
No one was there when I went to collect my things and make my final exit from the house that has been my legally defined home for over ten years. It took me two trips with a full car to get my belongings. They are now piled in my room and living room, waiting for me to figure out a system of storage. Some advances have been made, for example the pile of clothing has been cut down to stuff I can and will wear and stuff that holds real sentimental value. The real African dress that a coworker of my father gave me, the dress my grandmother made me when I was a flower girl, the insane pants I reworked into a flamboyant display of teenage outrageousness and a collection of tee shirts from various events that perhaps will find a place on a wall in some future Home. My pack and backpacking gear is hanging on the wall in the living room, an addition that tickles Dad’s fancy as it look like my bug-out pack. 
Other things present a dilemma in regards to space. Things that I do not want to lose, yet take up too much space. I have two huge bins full of stuffed animals. Some I could get rid of with little distress, but most are things I would like to keep, things I want to one day see my own children play with. Other things, like my keyboard, are items I value yet don’t have the current desire to use. Some things are merely part of an issue I have with throwing something out that may have value to someone else, yet I am too lazy to find it a new home. 
I have no doubt that my hording skills will eventually be able to find a spot for everything. But in the interim the items that I had consigned to be dealt with later surround me. 
In truth I was not sorry to leave that place for good. In a way it was liberating to be done with it. Sure, I have good memories, but more often it was a place of loneliness and grasping at something that could never be. A place of mindless escape, without the peace that occupancies a positive place. 
I did cry for one thing I left there. I will write about her further, as one of my defining creatures, but here I will say that leaving Sadie behind is more saddening then leaving even my mother.
So that door has closed. Soon that particular bridge will burn. My mother has made no effort to change what has happened and Eric has alienated the one person interested in facilitating reconciliation. Now I am disconnected from both the people responsible for my existence in this world.
 Yet my friends have reminded me that the family you choose often has more worth then the one that shares your DNA. The truth of this is born out in the presence of my Dad, never could a daughter love and respect a father more then I do him, and never could a father love and cherish his daughter more then my Dad does me. Our connection is not based on blood, but love. I have the brothers of my soul in Aaron, Mike and David, my sisters in Beanie, Ashley and occasionally Katie and Beth. I even have a mother in Barbara and a crotchety grandmother in Louise. Even when distance and time separates me from these people, I will always be able to look back upon their influence in my life with joy. These are the people for whom I will walk through fire. 
This is my family.