I think it’s okay to cry now. After all, yesterday I spent my final night sleeping in a place I’ve called my own for the last 25 years!
After a quarter of a century, my wife and I finally bid farewell this week to our matrimonial home to move on with our teens to the next phase of our lives.
While the trigger for this decision over a year ago was my wife’s wish to move to an apartment closer to her parents as they turned 80, I refuse to make that a central reason for myself. That would be abdicating too much influence to people who ought not to have that huge a sway over my life and that of my family’s.
Instead, what I would say is that, after living here for this long, many would agree it’s time for a refresh. And what better way than to uproot and relocate? New start. New surroundings. Pretty much new everything.
I’m sure in the next few months, I’ll come around to embracing all these changes.
But right now is not the time. Instead, right now’s the time to mourn.
What This Place Has Meant To Me
When my then-girlfriend and I started hunting for a matrimonial home back in 1998-1999 (after dating for some four to five years), we knew it had to be in the eastern part of our island city-state. After all, the two of us had lived practically our whole lives in the east so it was familiar territory.
We also wanted a fairly spacious apartment that was in a fairly quiet neighbourhood, on a high floor, and offered up a nice view of nature. Be near the sea.
We were also actively involved in serving our church, so it made sense to live close to it.
Long story short, after months of searching, we eventually found one that fit all those criteria and then some.
After our wedding in April 2000, we moved in and spent the next 25 years building a life together and having kids along the way.
This home has been our sanctuary. Our retreat. Our very own place to call home. The first place we have ever paid for and owned. No small feat in a country with sky-high costs of living when it comes to anything from cars to houses.
Having lived what felt like a lifetime (30 years to be exact) under one or another family member’s roof (first my father, then my older brother, and then my oldest sister), I can’t tell you the depth of emotion and gratitude having my own roof has been for me these past 25 years!
What Leaving My Home Means To Me
Famous writer and activist Maya Angelou (1928-2014) once said: “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” (Taken from All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes — 1986)
That last bit in her quote speaks to my feelings about my home. Home is a place where my very sense of self and identity should never be questioned or placed under a microscope for scrutiny. Everywhere else, I can be accused, accosted, and even attacked. But not my home. Never my home.
Behind locked doors, I am in my safe space where no one untoward should be able to get to me. Where I am subservient to no one because I’m at the mercy of another’s generosity to shelter me, a “generosity” that rarely comes without some string or other attached. Think “my house, my rules.” Think “you can’t come and go as you please.” And think, “you need permission to watch TV or grab a midnight snack.”
So to now leave my own home after a quarter of a century, and plunge into three months of living under my in-laws’ roof while our next home in a different part of the East undergoes extensive renovation before it’s ready for us to move in, feels like I’ve lost something of my own that I will never get back, after what feels like a 30 year fight to get it!
My home isn’t just a place. A space. Bricks and mortar.
Words fail to describe my sense of loss since relinquishing my keys to the property agent this evening, and walking away forever from access to my own private Idaho, as it were.
I weep.
My Hopes For The Refresh
At this point, many probably think I’m being overly-dramatic. It’s just a temporary arrangement. Surely a bigger, better home awaits, right?
Well, I’m not being overly-dramatic.
For most of my life, I’ve been living under the shadow of loveless, quarrelsome parents (in particular, my father) and siblings. Even when I spent three years living in my university hostel, I could never claim space for myself since I always had a roommate.
A space of my own felt like something that was forever missing in my life.
Before I was married, I tried to find space for myself in other ways. I stayed away from my parents and siblings by being out as much as I could on my own. I would wander about on my sprawling university campus. Or parks and public spaces I could access. Taking long bus rides. Spending copious amounts of time in libraries or cinemas. Those were my places of sanctuary, even though they weren’t mine but shared with faceless crowds.
So these past 25 years, having a place to call my own, has been nothing short of liberating. Beautific. Cathartic. Thereuptic.
All that will be put on hold from now until June, when renovations for my next home are estimated to be completed and I have to live under someone else’s hospitality that invariably comes with strings.
Still, I mustn’t let that sink any hopes for what’s to come in the future.
At 55 years of age this year, the move will be my “refresh”. My new “25 years” or more, God willing, as I head full swing into my retirement season.
What are my hopes for this refresh? No more moving. No more renovating. More private spaces within. A refuge away from the crazy turbulent world outside.
For me. And my family.
For good.
