Everyone who has ever come to my flat where I have been
living for almost two years after moving out my parents’ home has said the same
thing.
‘You should do up the place. Get a few paintings or a lamp
maybe? Your walls look empty.’
I wasn’t.
Everything I am, everything I needed, I carried inside me. I
never let my walls become barriers holding up reminders from my past. Empty
walls let me be whoever I wanted to be. I didn’t let lamps impose warmth;
instead I let white light expose everything I was going through without the
filter of soothing yellow. I faced everything head on.
And it made me weak. I only realized that last night when I
found a chart I created long ago that lists important events in my life. I was
packing and I found it rolled up, forgotten in a corner. I opened it and my
life lay before me. Everything I was, all things that have brought me where I
am, it was there.
The answer to what I am and wanted to become lay there chalked
out in who I have been. Immediately it started to fill me up taking over the
emptiness I have been battling in recent months. I took me back to tougher situations
I had handled and won over. It brought me back my old joys and victories, old
love affairs, discoveries… I felt full.
I can’t believe I have lived two years in a place without
letting it comfort me.
I have decided to move back to my parents’ for a couple of
months to regain what I have lost to unfamiliarity. But the next house I move
into… I am going to bring so many things from my past and let them surround me.
You should too!
