Day 11’s prompt is to write about where you lived when you were 12, using varied sentence lengths. A teacher once commented years ago that I was the ‘queen of complex sentences’, so with any luck that shouldn’t be a problem! However, I am going to change the prompt a bit and write a bit about homes in general.
I moved into the house I currently live in 11 years ago, when I was 14. I live with my mum and my two cats, Topaz and Ludo, in the town that I grew up in. I have very itchy feet.
I am very lucky, I know this, yet at the same time I don’t feel it. Mum and I get on well for the most part, there was a time when I was a teenager that I remember thinking ‘we have nothing in common’ and feeling that we would never be close- luckily I was wrong. When I went to university (touched on in my ‘Losing Direction’ post) I found it very difficult and Mum was a rock for me during that time- I called her a lot at first and she helped me just to get through each day to start with. Gradually I ended up calling home once a week or so, visiting home once every month or two. Home was a place I felt safe when I was studying in Portsmouth; all the difficulties of adult life could be forgotten- a bit like when you’re ill and you just need someone to look after you. Coming home at the weekend meant I didn’t have to decide what to do with my day, I could just do what Mum was doing. I had constant company and a great distraction from my worries and work.
Now I’m back home from uni and having been back for three and a half years now it’s the things that once comforted me that bother me. I come home from work and Mum’s here. I get up in the morning and she’s there. I have the weekend ahead of me and she’s got the radio on in the kitchen and is on her laptop at the table; the only way I can get my own space is in my room, which I can’t spend every waking minute in, or in the bathroom (go figure). When I went to uni she scrapped my car to get some money off a new one, so we share the car too- if she goes out I don’t have my own transport and given that I get on the train to go to work or to visit my boyfriend I get rather sick of trains. I love her, don’t get me wrong. As I say, I am very lucky that I am able to live at home and therefore the rent and bills I pay are nowhere near as expensive as they would be if I lived on my own. It has allowed me to take my time finding a job that I really love and to do work to get experience that I might not have if I’d just had to take anything full time to pay the bills. It means I have home comforts, company (including the cats) and access to a car sometimes. Yet I crave my own space, my own home. Somewhere I can choose myself, in a town I have picked, working a job that I enjoy and that challenges me. A home I can come back to at the end of the day and know that is mine because I pay the rent or mortgage. I can choose what I eat that evening because I bought the food. I can decide what to put on the TV and what music to listen to; I can decide what colour I want the walls to be and when to put the dish washer on or do the washing up, when I want to have a bath, when I want to do some washing. I can bring a box of ciders into the house without thinking I am being judged, I don’t have to let her know if I decide to meet a friend after work… etc.
The thing is, there is the issue of what makes a house a home. Being able to choose all of the above helps, but I feel like people are a big part of creating a home. I crave the things I’ve listed above but they are also things that aren’t always going to be applicable. I realise that living with a significant other (which I hope to do in the not so distant future) also means having to consider their food, music and television tastes etc, quite aside from money issues and all kinds of other decisions… but I do feel like it would be different. Plus, as much as I feel my mum is my friend as well as my mother, living with someone who is not immediately related to you by blood is your choice and is new and different.
I don’t think I would want to live completely alone. At uni I lived with others, yet I still felt alone a lot of the time. I don’t want that to happen again, but I can’t grow and be an adult if I am constantly returning home to where my mum is.
I don’t really have a conclusion for this array of thoughts- it’s just some things that have been circling my brain for a while now in different ways. A couple of weeks ago an exciting chance to move out presented itself and I did all I could to grab it- on Friday I found out it had slipped through my fingers, so that has moved these thoughts to the forefront of my mind again.
I feel like it’s a bit like anything for a creative person; I love my home… I just want to be able to make my own.
Joy Being Creative 