Tetra

I had posted this on the weekend thread but I know I have a lot of support here, and I wanted to update you all on my progress.

Well, I was an unemployed, 35 year old recovering alcoholic, still living with my parents. I am very close to my dad but my mom can be extremely difficult.
Then I got a job - with very poor pay. After that I got offered a better job, although I am on a 3 month contract and I have 2 months to go. Although my co-worker said they will more than likely keep me on (although I know it is not guaranteed yet).

So I have put a security deposit on a shared house and I hope to move in this Sunday (fingers crossed)!


I moved out of my parents' home a few months before I turned 19.
Years later, after it was apparent that I needed to suck it up and return the place from whence I came or I was going to come home one day and find my possessions on the curb - and my health was not good.

Some would call it Kismet that my family were having some struggles of their own and could use someone to help out -- I called it a steaming pile of personal failure.

Logically, I knew this was the best for me, and it would be helpful for my family and my elderly Grandmother, and that I was being proactive in trying to stop and repair the hemorrhaging of my money and destruction of my credit history. Emotionally, I was destroyed.

Then I realized that I was mourning a life that I didn't actually have. I wasn't spending my weekends in a coffee shop writing whimsical screenplays or going to see the hip/hot/happening bands or having endless urban adventures. I was going to work, coming home, drinking, watching TV, dorking around online, sweating over my lack of money, going to bed.

I wasn't Carrie Bradshaw -- hoo boy, not in the least. I was just me, broke as hell and lucky enough to have a safety net.
I don't have a curfew or anything like that, but it's still a little odd to be telling my parents where I'm going and when I imagine I will be back. It's mostly to be polite, but there's still the teenage girl lurking inside me that remembers the first time she stayed out until three a.m. and came home to find her mother standing in the kitchen and all she said was “We'll discuss this in the morning” and she was so terrified she cried herself to sleep.

When I paid the deposit to my new place, I felt what everyone feels: excited.

I am excited over the beginning of a new phase in my life.

I am excited over figuring out where I’ll place my lamps, books and my picture of Audrey Hepburn.

I was excited for taking the next big step and being able to see my friends again.

I’ve learned leaving home is also a big step.

The morning of my last day at my parents’ house will be met with excitement.

We will have normal conversations.

We will drink coffee at the kitchen table, going over the plans for the day and how much fun the past weekend was.

It won’t hit me I am actually moving out until I remove my favorite books from my shelves and bring boxes full of memories down the stairs.

Suddenly, I will be left in the upstairs bedroom that only hinted that I lived there earlier that day.

I will wrap my arms around my pet, hug her and tell her this is only temporary.

I will grab my purse and walk out the door, leaving behind my home.
The new place is ok.

But, it won’t have my mom, who would be scrambling around Monday morning searching for her shoes.

The kitchen is nice.

But, it will not have my dad’s cup of tea still cooling on the table because he forgot to take it again.

The bedroom furniture is fine.

But, it won’t have my mattress with a dent the shape of my body in it.
In some homes, the soul of the space has been lovingly crafted over time. The memories we make there, bit by bit, laugh by laugh, with some heartache thrown in for good measure, make it seem inconceivable to ever abandon the house itself. We say that it’s the memories and people that make a home, not the things in it or the structure itself, yet when we’re forced to leave a treasured home behind, it doesn’t merely tug at the heartstrings — it damn near severs them.

I’ve left old apartments behind before, and while I was sad to leave certain aspects, I never anticipated the mourning that ensued when I began the process of moving on.

This was not the home I grew up in. In fact, there are two memorable homes that came before this one in question. There’s the house where I spent ages 1 - 5 in County Galway, and the house we originally moved to in Galway City where we lived for years. Then, my Mom and Dad bought a place in County Mayo and set up their next house — the one rich with memories.

But in the sense of soul, this was my home through and through.
We LIVED in this house. People always felt welcome like it was their own home, and treated it as such.

The memories created there took on more profound meaning than ever before after my Grandmother passed on in 2015. We clung to each other and to our constant — the house. The house didn’t let us down, it pulled us in and made us feel safe when we were so scared we couldn’t think straight. It reverberated the sound of Dad’s favorite songs. It wore the tread of visitors trickling in and out to spend time with us. It echoed the crying — it amplified the laughter. It kept bending and creasing, like a giant old sweatshirt, to be exactly what we needed when we didn’t even know what we needed.

And it continued to wrap us in its walls. The memories were suddenly immortalized. Our home was unconditional and selfless. A steadfast confidant. A man in the storm.

So what is it that makes us mourn the loss of a structure? It’s not the great architecture, or the way the light pours in through the windows in the morning. It’s the loss of the vessel that held our memories. It’s almost as if leaving a home rich in such a lived-in history causes our memories to spill out everywhere, and we feel like we’ve spun out of orbit, scrambling to collect them.

As I sit in this house for my final few days, I feel my heart breaking. It’s still breaking.

But we have to remember that we have lost the vessel, not the memories. We just have to build a new place to hold them.


Good luck to anyone who is struggling, suffering or in pain tonight. I have a candle lighting for all of you!

If I can do it, you can too!