As of yesterday, my house started to look like a home again.

Except for some missing cabinets and final trim and electrical work, the kitchen is finished. The heavy duty paper that had covered our new hardwood floors came up, revealing a dream realized after six years of grousing about our carpets. There’s still much to be done but my image of what our “new” home would look like is starting to become reality.

I stood in our living room that actually looks like a living room again, soaking in my husband’s wide grin and appreciating the look of pride on my contractor’s face. In response, my eyes started to brim over with tears, my words get caught in my throat.

“It’s just been such a long road,” I said. The tears I fought seeped out anyway. I thanked my contractor for the wonderful care he took to create our vision. “You deserve it,” he said. And then it was two of us dabbing at our eyes as we stared at my new kitchen.

When I was 35 I started running. My goal was to run a marathon by 40. I realized a year ago that it was a dream maybe for later but not for now. But I was wrong. I actually have completed that goal. My marathon didn’t involve running shoes or hours of training. Instead, it asked me to build up my inner strength and bulk up my emotional stamina. And now, almost six months after Sandy, I can see my finish line in the distance. I’m trying hard to hold it together, to muster the energy to get past just these last few feet: the final construction, the continuing insurance fight, the wondering about our loans and what we’ve already spent and how we’ll recover financially from it all.

If this is my marathon, I realize what kind of finisher I’ll be. There are people whose legs buckle and go noodley before their body collapses to the ground. Some raise their hands high in absolute triumph. Others leap and jump and are energized by the thrill of victory. And then there are people like me, who cross the line strong and then collapse on the ground, not because their body gave out but because they are acknowledging all that they have overcome to get to that point. The tears flow or the voice roars. Emotions penned up for months, reactions to experiences that you pinned up because you lacked the energy to confront them at that moment, come roaring out of you.

That’s the finisher I am: The emotional volcano. I feel the eruption coming. It will be a whoop and holler of absolute ecstasy when I’m able to walk groceries into my house instead of up the stairs. It’ll be a hum on my lips while I write grocery lists and chop vegetables and plan meals. The warm glow I’ll feel inside while watching my son build train tracks down the hallway. It’ll be the dancing I do as music fills the halls whose sole symphony has been the bleat of nail guns and whirl of circular saws.

But it will also be the sobbing I do after the kids are asleep and my husband and I are sitting on the couch. I’ll be filled with that strange mix of sadness, joy and relief that can come from a good cry. And I’ll realize that they’re not tears of pain or anguish. They’re tears of victory and joy.