This past weekend, my mother informed my sisters and me that our home had finally been sold. It had only been on the market for a few days, but my mother has spent the past few months fixing the place up, so I’m honestly not too surprised that someone snatched it up fast. My two older sisters aren’t to affected by my family moving to Chicago in about a month because they are both living on their own at this point. My younger sister seems indifferent to the idea, hiding her own feelings deep inside of herself like she always has; the most stoic daughter of us all. I’m the only one that has the need to say a formal goodbye to the home that I have spent the past 15 years of my life growing up in.
When I was 5 years old, and we had just moved into our house, I liked to roll around on the fresh carpet, pretending I was a dog scratching my back. I liked our home and how white the carpets looks, how crisp the paint job was, and how fresh the air felt brushing against the trees. My love for the house changed quickly, and it became my endless portal of self-indulgent depression. I sunk into that house, letting it grab onto my like an oversized sweatshirt, and it suffocated me throughout most of my teenage years.
The older I grew inside the house, the more disgusted with it I became. The yard didn’t grow grass, only moss, and the house was always filled with bugs because we were positioned on the edges of a wooded area. Our carpet always looked dirty because of our old diabetic dog who had peed all over the place in his later years, and whenever we brought up Christmas decorations from the basement the smell of the mold would have me breaking out into hives.
The house came with its own furniture, a couch, an armchair, a large cabinet, and a dining room table that we still have in there to this day. The table has hosted multiple games of Scrabble, Easter dinners, family meetings, and time outs. My first kiss occurred at that dining table, over a game of Monopoly, with sweaty palms and rosy pink faces, awkwardness against awkwardness.
The only place in the house that I truly loved was my own bedroom. My parents allowed me to paint it myself, dark purple on two walls and teal on two walls, both parallel to one another. I loved that room. I fashioned it after an episode of Reba when Kyra, Reba’s daughter, moves into her father’s house and has her own room. She too had purple and teal walls and I fell in love with the concept instantaneously.
In order to sell the house my mom had to paint my room a more “appealing” color, so now it is a grey-blue. No uneven brush strokes, or spots of paint on the ceiling, and no more “Erinn” signature I had signed in Sharpie in the corner of my room behind my bed, where my mother would never see. My room is now one single color, perfectly painted, and it looks like every other room in the house. It isn’t my room anymore.
My house hasn’t been my house for a while now. I’m in my Junior year of college and I only utilize it as a place to stay on breaks. I haven’t appreciated the house for some time now, but knowing that it’s no longer there, that I can never get it back, is scary.
I’m living with my sister this summer, but for a while I won’t have a home. I’m not sure if my sister’s apartment will become a home for me, or even if my first apartment will be my next home, but right now I am homeless. No, I’m not living on the street under a cardboard box with a sign that said “Need food”, but I am emotionally homeless.
So, I guess this is goodbye.
Goodbye.
