A few nights ago I was at a house on the water. It had floor to ceiling windows, the kind that every person with seasonal depression prays for in their own home some day. The light poured in through the glass panes and spilled across the hardwood floor, covering each board in a chilled warmth. One familiar to the early days in October.
The view of the water was mesmerizing. The crashing current, the jetty that split the sea in two, the seagulls playing tag— it was all visible from the kitchen island. With windows that big, I swear I could have seen the sun waking the other side of the world, while the moon reflected off the sleeping waves in front of me. I stared in amazement.
Sometimes a vacation home in the off-season is like a classroom after school. Without all the hustle and bustle of the commotion around you, you’re stuck in a silence and vacancy that should feel peaceful but instead feels piercingly lonely.
And that word “sometimes”. I learned you can stick it onto anything and never be wrong. Because who’s to say that loneliness in a big, old, beautiful house doesn’t sometimes creep up on you.
Which is why I understood why the woman who owned that vacation home had floor to ceiling windows that oversaw the water, one-of-a-kind vases and chandeliers, and expensive as hell furniture. Why she decorated that entire house in as many “things” as she could— because it’s easier to buy things to fill a space than it is to speak about the things that are burrowing emptiness inside you.
I’ve always thought that vacation homes were complementary. That they were an “addition to” and a luxury emanating happiness. Lots of people can’t even afford one home. You have two? Three? Even four? Well, there’s nothing lonely about enough disposable income to host the most extravagant parties in your very own properties across the country, is there?
That was the first time I realized that a vacation home isn’t always an escape to paradise. Sometimes, it’s to mask a pain that would otherwise be too apparent at just one residential address.
When I was there, I moved through the home as if I would never be back. My fingertips sliding along the cold, marble countertops, my eyes scanning the smallest details of the original artwork hanging on the walls, my mind storing away the image of the outside where the green grass cut off and gives way to sand. I savored every second I stood in that house.
But later that night, I sat down at the kitchen table a little while before I left. Across from me was the woman who lived there. She was dressed to the 9’s in her own home. Upstaging her appearance for God knows who. As if she needed supplemental proof that she made millions and could maintain the luxury of whatever had her name on it. Anyone who saw her would have thought, “This woman has her shit together.”
Except she didn’t. Her shit was falling apart. Just not the things you can pay to upkeep.
My heart was heavy for her. Someone who “had it all” from the outside was struggling so desperately on the inside. I wanted to ask why. Why do you do all of this if you’re not feeling anything in this? But I already knew the answer. Already knew that if she could make people think she had it all, she could distract herself with the idea that she really did.
One of the last things she told me before I left was, “Make sure you do what makes you happy, not what makes other people happy.”
I hugged her, took one last look out of those big windows, this time gazing out at the rotating shine coming from the lighthouse in the distance, and told her to take care.
The next morning I woke up and looked out my regular sized window. I put on a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt, and I walked downstairs to the couch that my dog’s nails have made their marks in.
I was alone. It was just me and my dog. No one else.
I thought back to my dream from the night before. To the figurative woman who was lonely and unhappy in what seemed like the most ideal circumstances. And I looked around at what I had and smiled.
I might not have marble countertops or original artwork in my house, but I have a home. One that feels like school. Where the hustle and bustle of the commotion from the people who live inside it make it anything but lonely.
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