Eight years ago I bought a house with my husband. We moved in, had to clean a lot of it, (who moves out of a house and leaves it dirty?) ate pies for lunch and bought what the children call ‘the really good pizza’ for dinner.

It’s almost to the day that we got the keys to the house I’d dreamed of. Good indoor / outdoor flow, great for parties. Six bedrooms, though one was really more an office. But still. Six! Count them! Two bathrooms. A rumpus room for the children to use when they’re teenagers. It cost a bit more than we wanted, but Oh! The space. The memories we’ll create. The children will grow up here. We will grow old here. We couldn’t believe our luck. We loved our home.

And for a while, we were happy.

Today marks almost eight years to the day that we moved into that house. My husband even lifting me over the threshold of the door. Kind of. I took photographs of our twins, three years old at the time. So tiny. I vowed I would take pictures of them by the front door on the same date every year.

Every year since we bought pizza from the same place on the 13^th September.

It had been Friday 13^th. I don’t believe in superstition, yet today I feel as though fate was just waiting in the wings to rip the rug from under all of us.

Today, two days away from our house anniversary, I signed my house away. A separation agreement is many things, but it’s evoked a strange set of emotions from me. People tell me I look happier. People say I seem cheery and that I will look back and be glad I was brave. But I’m scared of the future.

When I met my husband, ex-husband to be, I owned a house, a nice car and had a great job. As from next week I’ll have an old car on its last legs, no job and no home to speak of. I had so many plans for our home, and none came to fruition. I tried. I tried so hard, yet it’s difficult when the other side of the partnership isn’t as keen.

And that is what finally pushed me over the edge I suppose. A good man, who didn’t really do anything wrong. Yet had stood in the house that needed so much cosmetic work and promised me that we could make it good. “I’m not sure,” I’d said. “I don’t want lots of work.” We’d already renovated two houses from the bottom up. I didn’t want to do any more. Not with four children.

“We’ll never have to move again” he said. I believed him. It was what convinced me to go along with the decision.

I’m full of sadness for what has happened. I wish so much that things were different. But it’s like wishing for the stars and the moon. I can’t help how I feel. It doesn’t really matter how much I wish I felt differently, I don’t and that’s that. Deep down, whilst I knew that I loved my husband, that I cared so much for him, I also knew he was my best friend, and I didn’t really want to be his wife.

And so to the future. Onward and upward as they say. It’s a new chapter. It’s scary. It’s absolutely terrifying in fact. Jobless, living in a rental I really don’t like very much, (or is it that I’ve always loathed renting, being at the mercy of feckless landlords?) and nobody behind me for support. But I’ve always been proud of the fact I can stand on my own two feet and make a go of anything I want. So let’s go. Chin up, paste a smile on and get on with the rest of my life. Let’s make it amazing.