You know that feeling when you do something… maybe not bad, exactly, but something you know will be misunderstood? Like you’re stepping out of line, even if no one else is around to see it. I think maybe I did that this weekend. Or I will have, by Monday. It’s hard to explain without sounding… I don’t know, dramatic. My farmhouse. It’s not really *my* farmhouse anymore, not since we sold it. The new owners, they take possession Monday morning. And I… I just couldn’t leave it like that. Not with them just… moving in. So I went back. For the last time. My kids think I’m staying with a friend – which, technically, I am now – but I spent Saturday and Sunday there. Just me and the house. It felt a little sneaky, a little wrong, being there when it wasn’t mine anymore. But I just had to. I walked through every room. Touched the doorframes, where the kids would mark their height every year (I painted over them, of course, but you can still feel the little bumps if you know where to look). Ran my hand over the kitchen counter where I rolled out pie dough for… oh, for decades. The floorboards in the living room – the ones that creak the most, right outside the big window – I stood there for ages. Just listened to the quiet. It was so quiet without anyone else there. Without the arguments, or the laughter, or the music blasting. (My oldest, bless his heart, thought he was a rock star in there.) I think maybe I just needed to say goodbye properly. But it wasn’t just saying goodbye, was it? That’s the part that feels a little… indulgent, I guess. I kept thinking about all the things I didn’t do. All the art I could have made, if I hadn’t been so busy with… everything else. Raising four kids in that big old house, it was a lot. And I don't regret it, not really. They’re good kids. But sometimes you look back and you think, what if? What if I’d been a little more selfish? What if I hadn’t always put everyone else first? The way the light hit the old paint in the afternoon… I used to sketch that sometimes. But then someone would need something, or dinner had to be made, or a bill had to be paid. I don’t know if this counts as a confession, really. More like… an admission of a quiet kind of sadness. Like I stole a piece of time, a last memory, that wasn’t really mine to have anymore. And I sat on the porch swing – the one my husband made, years ago – and I just watched the sun set for the last time from there. And I thought about how maybe I should have painted more sunsets. Or anything. It just… feels like a chapter closing, and not quite knowing what the next one is. Or if I even have the energy to write it. (That’s a silly way to put it, I know.) It just feels… like I should have more to show for it all. Like I should have left more of *me* in that house than just a ghost.