Realization.
Tonight, as I set off to my room to work on a present for Rae’s 20th birthday, it hit me. I really am growing up. In January, I will turn 20. No more being a teenager. While you’re technically an adult at 18, I don’t think it fully sinks in until you’re out of your teen years. Now you’re in your 20’s, that’s adult shit right there.
This week is my fall break. Before I get into the meat of this post, I need to give you some background information about me. I get really attached to things, anything. The cars our family has owned over the years, various houses, animals, people, and even my dorm room last year. The house my parents live in now is the only house besides Valleybrook in Pennsylvania that we have lived in for a significant amount of time. I was so attached to Valleybrook. That neighborhood, my friends, my backyard, and most especially, my room. We moved around a lot after that until we finally settled in this house. When we first moved in, I had a different bedroom. Then as a special surprise, my parents gave me the bonus room from 8th grade onward to enjoy my high school years in.
Over the span of my high school career, I spent so much time decorating the walls of my room. I truly made it my own. Quirky cartoons drawn by friends, posters from the high school plays, photographs of bands, and even collages and artwork done by myself began to fill most of the wall space in this room. And over that time, so many memories were made in this room. I look around and I think of dance parties with friends, my almost first kiss, heartbreak, heart to hearts, looking out the window waiting to sneak out, thinking I was such a bad ass for sneaking some vodka, hiding away after a big fight, etc. etc. the list goes on. I think about the friendships and relationships that have come and gone, the few that have remained, and what I miss. I’m so happy with my new life at school, but when I come home all the old feelings rush back. Sometimes it just hits me and I’m that 17 year old girl again. And I can’t begin to explain how weird it is to me that 17 is now 2 years in the past.
Now I sit here in my bed, typing up this melodramatic post, looking around my room. The pictures and drawings are still there, but besides that it’s mostly empty. No more desk, no more dresser. They’ve been moved elsewhere, there is no urgency to buy replacements. Just piles of shit laid where they used to be. Random items have been pulled out of the storage units and are sprawled out sporadically across the room. And sitting here, it hit me. My little apartment at school feels more like home to me now than my actual home does. I don’t want my new friends from school to come and see what an empty mess this is. It’s so sad looking to me, I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t feel some sense of that. I look at the emptiness and all I see is memories and what will never be again. I’m growing up. When I graduate college, I won’t be moving back home. My years of this house being my primary home are over. I always knew that going to college, but the reality of it never hit me until today. That is because last year, I wouldn’t call a dorm my home. But now, I live in a cozy apartment. My room has lots of empty wall space, but that is an easy fix. It’s entirely my space; it’s homey, and I love it. I think the thing I like most about my apartment is that it’s fresh, it’s new. While I love all the memories I have in my bedroom here, I have too many of them. Too many of them involve old boyfriends. At school, I have barely anything to remind me of them. I like my fresh start.
Anyways, I think I’m going to stop moping around about this. Sometimes I hate being a girl. The ridiculous mood swings I experience drive me nuts. An hour ago I thought I was having a mental breakdown, all over a room. Or at least, that’s how it started. Then it snowballed into a cry fest about anything and everything that has ever happened in my life. Again, being a girl can suck.
Lesson for the Day: Enjoy every little moment. If you’re sad, give in to it. Let yourself be sad. But only for a few moments. Then pull up your bootstraps and move on.
theramblingsofagirl 
I love that lesson. Its a great way to deal with emotions…I’m going through a phase where I too have to move from a place i’ve called home for quite some time. Its really tough to leave one’s comfort zone but from experience I know that it is better to keep moving than to remain in one place. That’s the only way to discover more.
Yeah, of course, it is easier said than done. But I really try to not let it get the best of me. Last year was a rough transition to college, but now it feels weird leaving and coming home. I just feel bad because I know it makes my family sad that I’m not home as often.
I can so relate with that feeling of attachment…unfortunately that emotion was conditioned out of me forcefully…being an army kid I had to relocate with my father with every posting of his. This would happen every 3 years and I got tuned to changing my home and friends every 3 years…and now in adult life its tough for me to recondition myself into staying in one place for long…Sometimes I go crazy!
I wouldn’t have done well with that at all, I very recently started coming out of my incredibly shy phase. Then again, maybe it would have forced me out of it? Who knows. We moved houses a bit before I went to college, but basically stayed in the same area so I didn’t usually get attached to places.