The funny thing about Selling a House, a Home Sweet Home.

The house became a home. And now it’s on .

The funny thing about , if it’s a home, a home sweet home, is you have a relationship with that house.

​ it’s also like seeing your soon-to-be-ex on a dating app. It’s shocking, and sad. It’s the beginning of the end of something.

In my case, 18.5 years.

I bought the house, way beyond my means or what I could afford, with a nothing-down loan. I had no money, maybe $300 bucks in my account.

I was mostly looking at cheap houses and condos, until I saw this house, this Victorian, backing to a park. It’d been on the market for a year, so the price was a little soft — the seller, a good doctor moving to Denver, flexible. I walked in and saw the good bones and remember thinking, I could live here for the rest of my life. I never have to move again.

​I loved it up from the get go…

It smelled like cigarette smoke, back then, and had bright weird green and purple paint in some of the rooms. Chrome and black plastic chandelier, a particular un-favorite. The upstairs bathroom, the larger of two bathrooms back then, was small and cramped and claustrophobic and frankly depressing, like something bad had happened…