Having the house to myself has left me realising just how detached I was from the house while I was living with my husband. It didn’t feel like my home because it didn’t enough of me about it. I was allowed one bookcase, but decor and artwork was mostly his choice because he had better taste than me. He prefers clean surfaces and walls – I like my oddments and pictures. Star Wars Lego, photos of us, holidays, and family. Things that mean something to me.

Until he moved out, I didn’t really appreciate what he used to do – back in our Golden Age, and even after when he kept busy to prevent his head going on off on one and manage his mental health.

He would put the effort into preparing to decorate properly. It’s from him that I learnt how to paint walls and skirting, and hang wallpaper. But I left it all to him. We might “agree” on what something would look like, but he’d do most of the work and make most of the decisios. I didn’t feel involved and I didn’t really want to be involved.

It wasn’t just decorating – I would also leave most of the housework to him. He has higher standards than me anyway, and I worked full-time, while he was either part-time or off long-term sick with mental health issues. He did lower his standards to accommodate me after I complained that I hated living in a show home.

It was an abdication.

I was, however, keen on the garden. That wasn’t as important to my husband, so I’d do all the maintenance and building work (eg sheds, decking, and landscaping).

However, gardens were something we’d be more likely to work on together. The last time was selecting and digging the pond – which we did the week after mum’s funeral because I needed to do something.

Then came COVID, which turned everybody’s lives upside down.

In order to give my husband something to do in the long days imprisoned in the house, I gave up on the garden and let my husband potter around during that gloriously hot summer. I was lucky and was able to work from home the whole time.

Some of the things he did upset me: he took potted garden plants that my mum had given me and put them in the ground. Some of them died. He would dig up and move things, some survived, some didn’t. He wasn’t so good at working out where in the garden this would prosper.

However, his built garden landscape elements are beautiful – a veranda on the shed that gives it a beach hut feel and is very useful on a rainy day, and he built a pergola for wisteria.

Now that I’m living alone, I am starting to take charge of my environment: I am beginning to decorate and repair things ruined by a couple of years of neglect and illness, finish jobs that we started (he did the hard work of preparing the lounge), and in the garden I have begun to take care of it again. 

When he moved out, it was liberating, but also an education in how disinterested I was in “our” home.

Now I have to take responsibility and I’m enjoying the freedom that it brings, but also appreciating the effort involved.

Now I am reclaiming sovereignty.