Those of you that know me, know that I love Halloween more than any other day of the year. So much, in fact, that I additionally celebrate Halloween in April when about thirty friends and myself dress up and go out and about, in costume. I also created Zombie Valentine's Day, where we dress up as zombies and dine in the nicer establishments, where couples like to celebrate the love-fest (because there is nothing quite like proposing to your girl with a group of zombies carrying on at the next table). Random costumes occur all year long, in my world.
As a result of my love for Halloween, I have collected Halloween decorations for as long as I have had money to spend and many of the gifts that people have bought me for my birthdays and Christmas were Halloween oriented. The amount of money that I have amassed in Halloween decorations, costumes, and accessories throughout the years is astronomical. I used to keep the decorations up year round and friends often joked that visiting my home during the Christmas months was reminiscent of being part of The Nightmare Before Christmas. These days, I have a closet dedicated to just Halloween items--one of the luxuries of being a homeowner. Even still, my house always has a touch of macabre in any room you enter.
I haven't decorated for Halloween since 2007, due to moving in with the PFA-ex. I wasn't permitted to have any of my personal items on display in his house--be it pictures, decorations or knick-knacks. When I moved in, he had the entire upstairs of his house blocked off and it was basically storage. I cleaned each room upstairs and turned one of the rooms into a ferret room, complete with paying for and installing laminate flooring. I had the ferret room and a spare bedroom that had some of my personal items in it. He permitted the spare bedroom to be decorated since his teenage daughter lived in Tennessee and would need a place to sleep during a visit (he also talked me into spending $375 for her plane ticket since he didn't have a credit card--like always, he promised he would pay me back--more promises that he never kept).
Basically, what happened when I moved in with him was, I sold and gave away most of my possessions and put my own house on the market. While living with him, the majority of my remaining possessions were in boxes. Other than the two rooms upstairs that he didn't use anyhow, the house was kept "his;" never "ours." His excuse was that since his house was "under construction," he didn't want my stuff to get broken and we would have to take it down as the remodeling occurred. Oddly enough, there was very little remodeling that occurred during my time with him.
At any rate, since my possessions were not a part of "our life together," decorating for the holidays did not happen, either. When I moved back into my home in 2009, I had very little left. No furniture, no kitchen supplies, most of my possessions were sold for pennies on the dollar simply because I did not have the room to store them at his house and why would I need my own things?
I moved back in November of 2009. 2010 saw me too depressed to care about decorating--even for Halloween. That was the year that I lost my family and my nephews--why bother with decorating if they were not going to be here to appreciate it? During the next two years, my current boyfriend/fiancé had moved in and we were finding places for his belongings, as well. Halloween wasn't a priority.
So here we are, 2013. I have the itch once again! I am excited! It is like a reunion with old friends. I start envisioning where everything will go; I start thinking about all of the awesome that is tucked away in my Halloween closet; I remember how much fun it always was putting it up and have just barely managed to make it until September to dig it all out and begin.
Today was the day, I made sure that my paperwork was done and we started dragging out the boxes. Except, wait! Where is the crazy, motion-activated ghost that scared my nephews so much that I had to turn it off whenever they visited? Where are all of my cool, little action figures? Where is my Hellraiser stuff? Where is... everything???
My lords. Did I really sell off that much? I know a lot of it ended up being given away to friends and going to Agape (a local, charitable organization that helps families in crisis, at no charge to them). There is a good possibility that some of it accidently got left behind at his house. Either way, my excitement soon turned to disappointment as I searched for this item and that, only to discover that they were gone.
I know I sound whiny. I know, they were just replaceable possessions. So many things that I lost in that relationship. Family. Friends. My self-esteem. Thousands of dollars. Maybe it was just too much on an already emotionally challenging day. Maybe I just want to reach the point in the story where I can tell it without feeling the pain attached. Maybe it is just one more piece of my life that I will never get back. Maybe it is just a reminder of how much I lost because of that relationship.
Maybe it is symbolic of the disappointment that relationship was, in and of itself. I entered it with such expectation and hope. Excitement and plans for a future so much different than what it turned out to be. It's so difficult looking back and seeing how blind I was, how naïve, how trusting. How much faith I had in him and how he not only took advantage, but intentionally broke me, as well. How something as little as decorating my house for Halloween can be a trigger, a reminder, of the scars that I have been covering up and pretending were gone.
How even my favorite time of the year is now tainted.
Did my friends and family really believe everything was alright, when 2009 saw the first time in my entire life that I didn't even dress up for Halloween? Did they forget that I usually dressed up every day of Halloween week, for work, for fun, just because? Did they really buy the story that I "just wasn't into it," that year? Did they really miss how depressed and unhappy I was?
It still boggles my mind that even now they can only see "how happy I was." Am I really such a good actress? Why did they only notice after I was away from him that I had lost weight? When I was with him, I "looked great" and even my doctor stated that the weight loss must be "from all of that good sex;" (AFTER he asked me if I had cancer). As soon as I left the PFA-ex, the weight loss was no longer a good thing, but a "concern." Surely a sign of something darker, some evil that I was doing to myself. My happiness upon leaving and renewed joy in life was also viewed as only being possible through some dark avenue. Why couldn't they see that I was happy to be free?
As I sit and look at one of the few decorations that I have left, a simple gargoyle plaque paying tribute to Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here," I am not surprised that it is one of the few of my decorations that survived those days.
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