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Home again
Dec. 29th, 2002 12:14 amSo I have braved the last remnants of holiday traffic, and the Garden State Parkway, and am safely holed up in my mother's house for the next few days. It feels weird saying that - technically, now, it is my mother's house. I haven't lived here since 1992. At the same time, I lived here longer than I've ever lived in any one other place. Most of my sentient life was spent in this house... in this room, as a matter of fact.
The room that has been set up for me is currently the computer room, also the cat's room. It's the room that was mine until I left for college, and though the furniture has been rearranged, it still has enough of the flavor of my teenage self to make me feel decidedly odd. There's the same bed that I slept on, with the same unicorn-patterned comforter. The computer is sitting on my old desk, with the chipped grey paint, and pictures from my senior prom still stuck in the bottom drawer. My autographed photos (Patrick Stewart, Dean Stockwell, Joe Bob Briggs, and a handful of others) still make a collage on one wall, half-hidden by toppled bookshelves.
It's not the same room anymore, or even the same house; too many things have changed. But still, it's hard to fall asleep in here and not wonder if, when I wake up, I'll still be me as I am now. Or will I be sixteen years old again, with the rest of my life having been just a particularly vivid flight of fancy? Will my friend Rob be tapping on the window, waking me up so we can sneak out to the boardwalk? Will my old calico cat be sleeping on my feet, my father snoring upstairs or sneaking down to make sure my door isn't closed?
I can close the door now, if I want to, and that helps a little. Even so... ever since my life has become my own, I've felt like I've cheated fate in some way. I don't belong to this Grand Prize of a life, with a house and a dream job and fascinating hobbies. I belong with the rest of my classmates from the wrong side of town, working on a boardwalk franchise or selling Avon, with two kids, an ex-husband, and my choice of weight or substance-abuse issues. And in some bizarre alternate universe, I'm afraid I'll wake up in high school again, and re-live my life the way it was destined to be, and wind up there instead of here.
That's not my life, though. I escaped, I won, I somehow managed to wind up in the world I wanted instead of the world I was prepared to endure. And thinking this through, I think I have the mental fortitude now to face this room tonight, and still be myself in the morning.
The room that has been set up for me is currently the computer room, also the cat's room. It's the room that was mine until I left for college, and though the furniture has been rearranged, it still has enough of the flavor of my teenage self to make me feel decidedly odd. There's the same bed that I slept on, with the same unicorn-patterned comforter. The computer is sitting on my old desk, with the chipped grey paint, and pictures from my senior prom still stuck in the bottom drawer. My autographed photos (Patrick Stewart, Dean Stockwell, Joe Bob Briggs, and a handful of others) still make a collage on one wall, half-hidden by toppled bookshelves.
It's not the same room anymore, or even the same house; too many things have changed. But still, it's hard to fall asleep in here and not wonder if, when I wake up, I'll still be me as I am now. Or will I be sixteen years old again, with the rest of my life having been just a particularly vivid flight of fancy? Will my friend Rob be tapping on the window, waking me up so we can sneak out to the boardwalk? Will my old calico cat be sleeping on my feet, my father snoring upstairs or sneaking down to make sure my door isn't closed?
I can close the door now, if I want to, and that helps a little. Even so... ever since my life has become my own, I've felt like I've cheated fate in some way. I don't belong to this Grand Prize of a life, with a house and a dream job and fascinating hobbies. I belong with the rest of my classmates from the wrong side of town, working on a boardwalk franchise or selling Avon, with two kids, an ex-husband, and my choice of weight or substance-abuse issues. And in some bizarre alternate universe, I'm afraid I'll wake up in high school again, and re-live my life the way it was destined to be, and wind up there instead of here.
That's not my life, though. I escaped, I won, I somehow managed to wind up in the world I wanted instead of the world I was prepared to endure. And thinking this through, I think I have the mental fortitude now to face this room tonight, and still be myself in the morning.
