ode to an old house
my little sister went off to college this week and i found myself reminiscing on that cosmic time in my life with this old essay, which i wrote on the eve of my college graduation
It is 2 A.M. and it’s raining outside. I sit in the dark at the table in the front room. The only light comes from my computer screen and the meek warm glow of the mini-lantern string lights that adorn the staircase. We call it the front room because it isn’t quite a dining room or a room at all, more like an alcove beside the stairs and the front door. It’s where a large table has always sat, usually (in the best of times) littered with papers and packages and old plates with crumbs and ketchup smears on them. Sometimes flowers too, but they don’t stay fresh long. Beauty like that promises only one thing: an end.
The end has finally come. Graduation. And it’s coming quickly, like falling asleep. I thought it would hurt more, this ending. I thought it would feel like tearing flesh from my body. Shouldn’t leaving your home feel brutal? But falling asleep does not hurt. It is expected, even if it is not wanted, and there is no ceremony surrounding the event. One moment you are awake — the next, you’re just not. And I’m starting to realize that my eyelids are getting heavy. Just a little bit. After all, they’ve been open for three years. And wow- they’ve seen some amazing and terrible things. They’ve watched the most unbelievable movie and the movie is almost over. The credits will roll soon. And my eyes will finally shut. They can’t stay open forever. No good movie lasts that long.
When they open again, it’ll be a new day and a new chapter.
I took a silly personality quiz today about guardian angels and one of the questions asked if I thought my guardian angel was always with me. I said no. No, because my guardian angel doesn’t feel like a shadow or a person. It feels like a house. An old, brick house with warm light and dirty floors. When I’m in the house, the angel feels present. I know who I am and where I’ve been. I have a firm grasp of everything that has made me become myself. No one talks about how important that grasp is. When I’m away from the house for too long, sometimes I feel lost in myself. The angel feels far away, muted behind a glass. I forget how I got here and who made me. Nothing terrifies me more than forgetting. Memory is what makes loss sting, but loss is only bearable if you can remember.
These memories— they are what I would save in a fire. There is nothing I cherish more.
I am scared of who I am outside of these walls. Inside, I am safe but I am also young and ready to experience the life that hasn’t happened yet. Outside, I am no longer waiting, I am experiencing. Time seems faster out there and I prefer the clock in here. It hasn’t all been pleasant, no, and I would never try to claim otherwise. Many fighting words, both trivial and deeply resentful, have scuffed the floors and walls. Boyfriends were broken up with, friends threw verbal fists, phone calls of loved one’s passings were taken, ugly truths were necessarily told. Hearts broke here. So many hearts broke here, for so many reasons. The house will always smell faintly of heartbreak. There is a heaviness that can’t be fumigated. The porch alone is stained with tears.
Despite this all, it is not a dreadful place to live. In fact, quite the opposite. It is wonderful to live in a place that is a living memory of all that once was. Every morning, I get to wake up to all the life that was lived here. I feel like one part of a larger story- the story of the house. And what exquisite things happened as well. Wondrous, surprising, hilarious things. Right where I sit now, a year and a half ago I was coming out to my greatest friend. I finished my undergraduate degree at this very table, in the middle of a pandemic no less. I had talks on the porch or the couch that could fill my belly up like a warm meal. Two years ago, in the room next door, I told someone that I didn’t love them anymore even though it scared me. And today, I told someone else that I did love them- just a few feet away from where I sit now- and he smiled and squeezed me and said it back.
I will think about that moment for the rest of my life. It felt like the closing of a book. Something about lying on the couch in the best room in the house, surrounded by twinkling lights and New Yorker magazines and plastic Burnett’s bottles, and saying something as enormous and simple as “I love you”- it was the ultimate final scene. I remember the girl who first entered this house. I think of every kick and bruise it took to turn her into me. Some days, I could barely pick her up off of the floor. But today, she felt only peace. The sun bled in through the windows and the fans spun and two young people sat in blissful, loving silence, enjoying the fleeting glimmers of a final semester, a final chapter.
Oh, I am going to miss this place. I am going to miss the person that I was when I called this house my home. One final heartbreak for the house to archive — me, leaving it. I wish I could repay a house for the space that it gave me to grow. Houses are so neglected in that way.
The rain has stopped outside and I’ve been writing for an hour. It won’t be the last time, most likely, that I wax poetic on these old bricks. But it will be the last time that I do it within these walls. Every beautiful thing ends. This is okay. I’m starting to think that a thing cannot be beautiful, unless there is an expiration. I wish I could say thank you. I wish I could say I’m sorry. Mostly, I wish I could tell the house how much I love it without looking crazy. I made something beautiful here. It hurt and it stung and it scarred, but I did it. I suppose what I made was myself. And I like the self that has been carved out of this place: bold, strong, patient, and wise. She makes me proud. That is all I can be at the end of the day: proud
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