You’ve all heard the phrase “a house is not a home.” I know this to be true for a fact, which is what makes the events of today so difficult. Today I spent the entire day moving. We’re not moving far, something for which I’m very grateful; we’re only moving two streets away from the house we’re leaving. However, I didn’t really anticipate quite how difficult it would be to actually leave the place that has been my home for the past six years.
I’ve lived a lot of places in my life. Eight different houses (not counting the one we’ve just moved into), two apartments, and one dorm room. Of all those places, only two- the house I grew up in and the house I’m moving out of today- have ever felt like home to me. The one I grew up in was home for obvious reasons. It was all I knew. My parents moved there when I was two and I lived there until I was ten or eleven. It was where I met my childhood best friend when I was four and a half, not to mention every single friend I had in elementary school. It was where I learned to read, where I learned to ride a bike, where I played kickball every day in the summer, where my mom dropped my Barney cake on the white carpet on my fourth birthday. It was also home to some not-so-good memories: my parents telling us they were getting a divorce, my first time having to get stitches, my best friend moving away. Most of my childhood memories occurred within a few miles of that house. It was terrifying to leave it. I was young, and I was leaving my friends and my school district and the only home I’d ever known. But I got through it, because that’s life and that’s what you have to do.
Both of my parents have moved several times since then, but when I was thirteen, I moved into this house with my mom and sister. Now, two weeks before my twentieth birthday, I’m leaving it. I spent all of my teenage years here. All of high school, countless sleepovers and parties and Thanksgivings and Christmases, my first job and my graduation and becoming an adult, learning about the real world and then going out to experience it for myself, while still always having this place to come back to. This house watched me grow up from a silly, nerdy, irresponsible, naïve thirteen-year-old into a silly, nerdy, slightly more responsible but much more experienced adult.
Silly as it may seem, it’s really hard for me to leave this house and all the memories it holds. When my mom told me a few weeks ago that we had to move, I was upset about it, but now, sitting on the floor and looking around at my nearly empty basement, it’s really hitting me that this is no longer my home. I deal with change as it comes, but I’m not really the biggest fan of permanent change. I attach such strong emotions to everything I do and everywhere I go that it makes it especially difficult when those things end. It’s a part of life, I know, but it’s not a part of life I enjoy, and while it’s something I’ll always have to deal with, I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get used to.
My winterguard coaches back in high school often used the metaphor that we were pebbles. If I remember correctly, they would say that in the same way that each pebble in the road makes that road what it is, each of us, and each memory, was a pebble that helped shape their lives; their “road.” I guess it’s the same way with everything you encounter in your life. Things may change, but each change results in a new pebble, shaping the road that you travel throughout your life. It may be hard and scary, but I want my road to be long and winding, and if that means I get lost on that road along the way, then I’ll make an adventure out of finding my way back.
Anyway, to finish off the last blog post I will ever write in this house (sniff), I just want to say thanks to the people who knew that this was a bit difficult for me and who have been encouraging me instead of rolling their eyes and reminding me how insignificant it really is.
Here’s to a new chapter. Adulthood, a new home, a new start, and just another pebble that makes this road what it is.
Song of the day: Vision of Persistence- Kevin MacLeod
Currently reading: Sloppy Thirds by Megan McCafferty
Just for te record, I was about to turn my phone off and sleep, then remembered I need to comment. Funny how my brain works, I radomly remember that I need to reply to an @ reply that was to me like two days after the fact... Uhh.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway. It's really not insignificant at all! I couldn't imagine moving, I've lived in one house my entire life, i'd be devastated, it'd be like i've finally lost all sense of my identity. But it may happen sometime in the near future, it might. I think you're kind of right about viewing it as a fresh start n stuff, I'd think of it the same way, it's kind of literally leaving your past behind you...
It'll be different for me, as well, after all, I watch you sleep. So I'm not sure how this is going to effect me, I might try and peer through your bedroom window, only to find I'm at the wrong house by accident, and be peering into the window of someone obsessed with Justin Bieber, so in that case, my eyes will be BURNED, they will pop right out of their sockets and roll onto their floor! In that case I'll have to turn into Peter Pan and be as sneaky as I possibly can to retreive the rolling eyeball, perhaps pretending I'm Mad Eye Moody in the process! But alas! What will I do if I make a racket after tripping over their Bieber-signed tennis racket? They, with their glaring eyes, engulfed in glittery Bieber nail polish, for they were so obsessed, they applied the goo of eternal destruction and horror onto their face! And what if I were to laugh in mockery and ridicule over their stupidy and obsession! What if they were strong muscled, and were to grab my neck ad throw me headfirst out of their window, NOT BEFORE bonking me on the head with their Jonas Brothers enlarged blow-up hammer? And what if I were to land right atop the area where they dispose of their waste and uneeded, maybe even inside the rubbish bin outside! Oh the horror, Nicole, the horror! To smell like tuna and bananas mixed with leaked batteries all because you moved and I couldn't, not even with all the Hufflepuff in me, FIND you!
...oh, Justine. There are no words for this comment. No. Words.
ReplyDelete<3