Home

It's Monday. Again.

Or perhaps, I should say, it's the last Monday.

The whole room is a mess. Or should I say, the room is a mess, because it's a mess where it matters. 

Everyone is packing; boxes, bags, clothes, forks, spoons, papers. Scattered everywhere. I run away from the place, of course.

From a distance, I watched; I watch as she pack away tiny bits of my life, little details that wouldnt have mattered a year ago, a week ago. But now, they do. I watched as she pack away into boxes and bags and containers of different colours and shapes and sizes the tiny bits of my old life, along with the newly acquired bits and scraps of things, all awaiting a new place to be stored, a new life to be used, a new me to be created. I watched as bits and parts of the old me being separated, classified and stored away, knowing that one day, I'll go even further, even longer.

Of all the things I could have done, I simply watched.

There are far greater things in life, worse things, better things, waiting for me somewhere out there, and this is only one of the first steps into the beginning. There'll be more milestones to be carved, more diaries and journals to be written in, more rooms to be filled. But right now, I don't think I can take it anymore.

I wonder if the rest would be the same.

I guess it's not the physical things I'd hold on most to. Not my room, not my books; heck, not even my pillow. It's the things I want to hold on to, but can't.

The small details I've never even realised were this important to me. The way my sister comes home everyday and grouse about homework and hunger. Or maybe the way my dad drives me home after shopping. Or maybe even the long long 'advices' on sufficient sleep.

Sometimes I wonder if it'll ever come back to this.

This eighteen-year-old me, simple, uncomplicated, content.

Leaving my home, leaving my town. Missing out on all the changes I'd never even notice if I'd stayed. Missing out on the day by day events that'll shape my sister from a kid to a teen. Missing out the way wrinkles might (I hope not) form gracefully on the once youthful faces I'd first seen when I was born. Saying goodbye is harder than I'd thought; maybe it's because of letting go.

Perhaps they were right. Absence does make the heart grow fonder.

Hell, I'm homesick already, and I haven't even left home.

I've dreamed many times about the day when I'd finally get to further my studies elsewhere. I'd never foreseen this part. Then again, who would?

It gets you thinking though. Many many seemingly insignificant moments, moments that should be cherished but didn't, we'd taken for granted. The tiny moments where we just sit together for meals, chatting away, ranting about homework and teachers and the general unfairness of being a kid; fighting each other for the comfortable sofas before movies start; reading quietly in the presence of each other, no words needed, quietly, contently, happily.

Someday, and I'm not talking about just this time, I'm going to come home and find that everything has changes, and nothing ever stays the same. The old me who used to read in my pink room while bantering with my sister would have been no more, but casted in history. People changes, things get old, time passes. 

Everything would have changed, and I could do nothing, but watch.

What would I give, to have those moments of blissful content preserved in time... But alas, I'm no God, and even God cannot recover what is past. So I write it all down, in hope that, someday, the future me, no matter where she'll be, will come back and read this, and relive what had been, how it felt to be eighteen again.

Safe; content.

At home.