Under contract

As of almost an hour ago, my townhouse is officially under contract. And I've felt the full range of emotions since then: pure, unfettered excitement, complete sadness, relief, stress, bitterness and right back to excitement.

Even though the house has only been on the market for a bit over three weeks, it's been four months coming considering I was officially relocted on Feb. 4.

I am absolutely thrilled that in two weeks, if all goes well and as long as the home inspector doesn't notice the monster living in my attic, I will be able to afford my own place to live and will have my own stuff to fill that place with.

I am completely devastated to be parting with the first home I ever owned; MY HOME; the place I saw built from the ground up. My baby.

I'm relieved that the homeless feeling that's been invading my life for nine months might finally start to subside.

I'm stressed about how I'm going to pull off this sale/apartment search/move in two weeks. Oh, did I mention I'm going to be gone to D.C. for a family reunion for five of those days? I'm stressed knowing that whereever I move to now will assuredly be a disappointment compared to the home I am leaving.

I'm bitter about having to give up the title of "homeowner," the title that I was oh-so proud to earn at age 25 after the saving and the stressing. I always loved hearing how impressed people were that I managed homeownership at such a young age. "That's so responsible of you." Responsibility is my M.O., and I've always been proud of that, even though it can be a burder or a problem sometimes.

I'm not buying a home this time around, because even though I'm not taking nearly as big of a financial hit on the house as I expected a couple of weeks ago, I'm still losing money. I've lost much of the down payment I went in with. Less money = less house, and I'm not OK with that right now.

But there's something else that's growing that I'll talk more about in the future. I'm having a growing uncertainty about my future: where I'll be, what I'll be doing, who I'll be doing it with. I know this is vague, and I apologize for that, but my thoughts aren't straight enough for me to put them into words. I do know this: as much as I prefer homeownership to renting, renting is the right thing for me now.

That's the update for now. Because I don't want to jinx the deal, I'm not going to tell you the details yet (I can assure you it was better than this) or the story of where homeselling meets Facebook, but I will as soon as it's through.