Lost.

I heard from the real estate agent that the house has been sold. Maybe Aaron was right and I jinxed it by wanting it too much and returning time and again for more peeks and private tours.

As I stood at our tiny sink doing our too many dishes for two, I tried to accept the reality of the fact that I have always been a dreamer and those dreams haven't really been helpful at all.

We lost the house before we ever really had a chance to try for it.

In his text to me aaron writes: "Maybe it was a sign that we should start getting serious about getting a hhouse and really starting our life. There will be another house."

I have to have faith that there will, indeed, be another house. This was just a passing fancy one summer when we were on the brink of being grown-ups.

But the urge to scream and throw my dirty dishes instead of calmly wiping them clean and rinsing them off makes real the aching, bottomless pain I'm feeling at seeing something of our dream life fade away.

Next time I like a house I promise I won't jinx it. Like a little girl, superstitious, I will wait to tell anyone-- until I'm sure.

If there is a next time. More likely we'll settle on something subpar because we have to for one reason or another. Life is like that, isn't it? We'll be in a raised ranch in some tired little neighborhood without charm or grace, living on the top floor with my parents on the bottom- Aaron working himself to death to pay the too-high mortgage on a house we don't particularly like and felt pressured into buying.

Maybe we'll move away. I'm beginning to like that idea alot.

I dread seeing the house on Arlington street subdivided into apartments and whored out for people who couldn't care less about the home's original charm and beauty and ... oh who the hell cares?