Feels Like Home

We've been discussing the colors we will paint our walls, some complimentary bright pastels to match our personalities, something soft and loud all at once. I think about the shade of lavender I picked for my new room all those years ago. I wonder what was happening then that I was unable to see, what conversations were being had behind closed doors, what was being screamed through the silence.

I remember how excited I was to move into a bigger room, to have an entire wall made of closets, to get this chance at a new beginning. I remember feeling grown up. I remember feeling, for the first time, like I had a room all my own. It went through so many changes over the years. I rearranged it more times than I can count. The walls transformed from tapestries of celebrities to pictures of my friends, ticket stubs, birthday cards. The room itself became a testament to the definition of me. I planted myself there. I called it home.

I don't think about the house of my childhood nearly as much as I had ever thought I would, but when I do think of it, I find that I know it as thoroughly, as intimately, as I have ever known anything. I can recall every inch of it. I can feel the imperfections of the walls beneath my hands. I can close my eyes and see our living and dining rooms, both before and after the walls that doubled as bookshelves were removed. I can feel the cold smoothness of our kitchen floor. I can anticipate each squeak of the floorboards. I can know, assuredly, that this once was home, and that I loved it as such.

I have moved four times since then, each time surrounding myself with the little pieces of me that I can't seem to let go, each time thrilled by the idea of a new beginning, each time telling myself that this is my new home. But more and more, I find that I leave my walls blank. More and more, I discover that fear of becoming too comfortable anywhere. More and more, I grow accustomed to this nomadic life.

I have no home. I have no childhood room to return to and explore, hide, rest easy in, waiting for me with open arms. I have only the memory of such a place. I cannot go back. I can only move forward.

And the truth of the matter is, if given the choice, I wouldn't go back. The significant changes in that house were not the removed bookcases or the transformed walls. It was happened within them. It was what happened to the people, the family, that lived there.

At our final yard sale, where three of the original four of us stood all day selling off the trinkets of our childhood, I began talking with a woman who had returned for the third time to buy our sleds. She had just gotten married. She was about to start a family of her own. "I hope you don't think I'm crazy," she said at the end of our driveway. "It just seems like you have the nicest family. You have what I want." I smiled. I restrained myself from telling her the truth. To this day, those words haunt me. Not because she had gotten it wrong, but because we were that once. We were what my parents wanted. We were what most parents want. We were the family - a mother, a father, a brother, a sister - who had played together in our big backyard with our beloved family dog and cat. We were that ideal, somehow.

And then, somehow, not. I cannot remember the shift in things. I honestly didn't know anything was changing until that night my parents gathered us together to tell us they were separating. I honestly didn't see it coming. Nor did I know what it would mean for my future. I couldn't have known then that I would spend the next four years trying to uncover clues in my past, trying to figure out where things went wrong, trying to understand love and its loss. I couldn't have known the secrets that would rise to the surface, or the deep, harrowing ways they would effect me. I couldn't have known that nothing would ever feel safe or simple in quite the same way. I couldn't have known that I was forever losing that comfort of feeling home.

Since then, I haven't allowed myself to get too comfortable anywhere -- in new homes, in jobs, in relationships. It would be easy to say that I lost faith in things, but that isn't the case. I still believe in comfort, in love, in happiness. I still believe that it's possible to have a happy life, and more than that, it's possible for ME to have a happy life. I still believe that one day I will be able to accept and forgive my past. I still believe that one day I will be able to move forward. I still believe that my walls will not be blank forever.

Even now, as we spend mornings discussing the possibilities, I have hope that I will one day find something that feels like home.