San Diego Reader

I live in this neighborhood because I wanted to get a divorce even less than I wanted to buy the house in which I currently live. We purchased this house in October 2007, nearly two and a half years after my husband came home from a six-month deployment in Iraq. He came home from Iraq a changed man, as it seems that so many of our soldiers do. For me, getting to know my husband after his time in Iraq was bittersweet. In some ways he was much improved - much more mature, responsible and aware of his obligations as a husband and a father. We did experience some of those behaviors that get thrown under the umbrella of "PTSD" but for me, by far the worst side-effect of his time in Iraq was his sudden and implacable decision to buy a house. We hadn't talked about the possibility of buying a home before he left on deployment but once back in San Diego he devoted literally hundreds of hours to poring over the MLS listings online. He'd leave work early and go look at houses he'd seen for sale online without telling me and then when I realized what he was doing with his spare time he decided to drag me along with him. It was a dark period. I strenuously objected to the idea of buying a house for reasons too numerous to mention here. The primary reason, however, is simply enough put: We didn't make enough money to buy the kind of house that I wanted in the neighborhood that I wanted to live in. I prefer to rent where I want to live rather than invest a much higher portion of our income in a house and a neighborhood I don't like. He disagreed. I am not a College-area native. I've lived in this city for over a decade and until last fall it had always been in Hillcrest, Mission Hills or somewhere in the small cluster of neighborhoods that surround downtown. I felt like anything east of 40th Street was heading dangerously close to Arizona. (I now live quite near 63rd.) My husband first saw the listing for our current home in late summer 07, I believe. We came and looked at it; I didn't think much of it then and I don't think much of it now. We fought. He was impervious to logic or emotion. He was absolutely convinced that buying this house was the best thing he could possibly do for his family. I consider myself to be a relatively intelligent woman with a bent towards amateur psychoanalysis; I tried to justify his thought process and therein find forgiveness for his insistence in doing something that was so clearly making me unhappy. "Okay," I said to myself, "this obsession with a buying a house surfaced right after he came back from Iraq, right? So, what happened in Iraq that led him to this compulsion? And why this particular house?" I theorized that at some point during deployment he was faced with his own mortality which in turn led to his realization that he had to succeed in providing a stable home for his wife and sons. Something about owning this boring, poorly-built 1960's suburban home made him feel safe and it was more important to gratify that urge that to hear any of my supplications to reconsider, wait, or hunt for another house that both of us were equally enthused about buying. I made it profoundly psychological, this desire of his to purchase this home, and I tried to see it as vital to his happiness. I'm still trying this. Sometimes, it works. One day in September of last year I came to the house for some reason or another that I can't remember now. We hadn't yet made the decision to buy it and as I find the College area fairly ugly and uninspiring I was again asking myself why it was that he felt so strongly about buying this house. It was a warm, pretty day in the beginning of the semester and as I was leaving the house and mulling over these seemingly unanswerable questions I drove past two young women who I can only assume were SDSU students. The two were walking down the hill towards my future home - long, blonde hair in ponytails, heavily-loaded backpacks over their shoulders, flip-flops on their feet and wearing...bikinis. I experienced a moment of clarity, that so-called "aha! moment", as I thought to myself, "I'm beginning to understand why my husband is interested in moving into this neighborhood...."

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