Yesterday, I demolished a four-foot doll house that I'd been dragging behind me for fourteen years.

It was initially a gift from Melissa, a woman who allowed me to live with her when I could no longer afford my apartment. I had told her in passing that I'd given up on the fantasy challenge of building a doll house from scratch, because I'd never be able to afford one. What I didn't tell her was that building a full-sized doll house is very impractical when you don't own the space that you're living/working in. 

So when I unwrapped that huge box of wood pieces, I smiled politely and never really intended to assemble it.

Melissa--I would come to realize--had a different plan. An entirely different agenda symbolized by this house.

Long story short, I painstakingly assembled the basic structure of the thing before she put me out of her house in 2012. I have relocated FOUR TIMES since then, subjecting friends and professional movers to lift and carry this hunk of solid wood onto trucks, elevators, and up flights of stairs, because I told myself for years that I would finish it when I was "comfortable enough to work on it again".

I told this to my therapist in 2020. He challenged me to add a few pieces to it. I added the porch posts a year later. And even when it sat in my new office/craft room/work room in my new home in 2022, I only added the base of the tower above the porch. Haven't touched it since. 

Kept it on my Bingo card, though.

Jenise, my GodSister/housemate, would always wait till I broached the subject of this unfinished albatross. I told her earlier this week that "The only thing keeping me from taking a sledgehammer to it [besides not having a sledge hammer!] is that I hate not finishing what I started." And then I told her the backstory of my relationship with Melissa, who turned out to be a mentally unstable control-freak.

It wasn't the first time I've told her that story. I even told it to my therapist. It was, however, the first time I hated myself for telling it, because it finally became crystal clear to me that I was NEVER going to finish that blankety-blank doll house. 

Like many things in my life--not the least of which was my whatevership with Melissa--I try to hold on to things, do my best to keep them alive, make them work, despite the glaring reality that the thing is dead, or the mental block that kept me from doing the work, because of the work that I put into it. I can't just "not finish" the work that I started.

But that's exactly what I've done with that dollhouse. And that had to stop.

Who needs a sledgehammer when you've inherited your mother's strong arm?

Little by little. Wall by wall. Swinging like John Henry. And when I was done...I felt SO FREE.

Should have done that a LONG time ago.