Moving On and Out

Last weekend I finally moved all my things out of my parents' house. I haven't lived with them for the past 13 years but I kept up my childhood bedroom partly because I never had a permanent home to store everything, partly out of laziness (my parents’ house is big enough for me to not bother) and partly as a refuge where the walls breathe happiness and the furniture smells of childhood Summers. The room was my personal museum of nick-nacks, story books, teenage love-letters, primary school notebooks, dolls, toys, indigo-blue Doc Martens boots and microscopically short mini-skirts.

I spent Saturday selecting. I made up an enormous box for charity with bedtime story books which were not that special to me, soft toys which I rarely cuddled and dolls whose hairdo was my fault. Then I chewed my way through an incredible amount of letters and postcards from the pre-email era. Silly notes secretly passed during classes, faded postcards from holiday resorts telling me that I was missed by people whom I hardly remember now. A cupboard full of hand-written memories was reduced and locked into a small shoe-box, to be my reminders of high-school crushes I could have died for and promises of eternal friendships with people I haven’t cared to e-mail for a decade or so. The rest was burnt and forgotten.

On Sunday help arrived to take my furniture apart and put the better pieces back together in my current apartment. My bedroom in my parents’ house became completely empty except for the dusty memories. I had a tsunami of nostalgia standing on the top of the ladder, wiping away spider webs from the empty wall and imagining my parents first entering into the room as a young and beautiful couple, expecting their first baby 35 years ago. Moments came back when my elder brother and me were horrified to find our young baby brother vomiting in his cot at night. I remembered the evenings when the three of us chatted away whispering in the dark after Dad switched off the light. We would talk ourselves into sleep about whales and sharks and dogs. And I felt the great relief of 20 years ago when my brothers moved into the attic room and the bedroom became all mine. I cried and felt ashamed, I felt as if I had been disloyal to my parents for taking away the evidence of all that past happiness.

But since I closed the door on he echoing walls all I feel is relief mixed with euphoria. Maybe this was the push I needed to move on? To believe that I am worthy of starting afresh? Maybe this was the way to really cut the invisible umbilical cord that held me back from fulfilling my dreams? I had such a special and happy childhood which made me who I am today. But now I would like to walk through adulthood with my head up. I would like to look ahead of me and not backwards. I want to stop comparing myself to the top of the class, everyone's favourite little girl I used to be. And I would love to full heartedly accept the fact that life has a tendency of not turning out the way you imagined it when staring at the clouds of your childhood skies.