• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

The year was 2005.  Elizabeth somberly closed the door to our room being quiet for Megan had just started her nap.  She didn’t look up at me as she passed by in the darkened hall keeping her head down as she proceeded down the staircase.  The house was quiet – sadly so.  We had retreated back to New York City after a failed business and a failed lifestyle shift in Houston.  We were again living in my parents’ house, tucking our left over possessions away in an over-packed bedroom.  It’s not that staying at my parents’ house had negative connotations, but in this context of utter defeat, it certainly was symbolic of such.  Our dreams, our hopes, our goals, our moral as a family was being questioned. 

Our options seemed limited. 

Could we just pick back up in New York City as life was prior moving to Houston?  This was certainly fitting, but a few thoughts constantly ran through my mind and something just did not sit right.  Basically, the truth is that we worked so long and so hard to make a new life for ourselves in Houston.  It was a goal that we wanted to reach one day. It was something we looked forward to, dreamed about.  We had mentally picked out floor plans and decor for the house we were going to have built one day.  It was going to be the place where we were going to raise a family, thrive, and enjoy life.  The truth hurt.  The truth … is that we moved to Houston and we did try to better ourselves, to make a living, to start a business.  And we did try to live a new lifestyle.  We did try – and, we failed.  And, it seemed that somewhere along the line, the great fortune and great optimism we felt for years somehow seemed to have forgotten about us.  Instead, a dark cloud loomed over us until we had reached the point where we were either going to reside in Houston in misery, or something else just had to give way.  We needed that break in the melancholy.  Retreating temporarily to something, somewhere, that previously had worked for us seemed to be a good start.

But this is what it only can be – a start…