There comes a time when you come home from college, walk into your bedroom, and say to yourself:
“Who’s room is this?”
Your room: the room that you grew up in, the room you cried in about your first love in middle school while the rest of your family was sleeping, the room you did your math homework in and read books in until the sun came up. Your room at home was your sanctuary; it holds a little bit of everything that made you who you are.
And then college came, and you moved out. You got a new room, and a new life, with new memories and newfound characteristics. You changed; you grew up.
So when you walk into your old room at home, somehow you don’t feel as comfortable as you remembered. The pictures are of boyfriends you no longer have, and friends you no longer speak to. The bed sheets are a print you no longer have a taste for, and the posters on the wall no longer represent you.
You sit there, and it feels strange. Strange that everything changed right under your nose. You became a different person and you didn’t even know it.
When that time comes, when you open the door and feel as if you’re looking into a stranger’s room, that’s when you know you’ve gotten on the path to growing up. You’ve moved on from all of the bittersweet memories of your adolescence and are now working on creating your memories of adulthood.
It’s a strange feeling. Not quite sad, yet not quite good, either.
So you crawl under the blankets of this stranger’s bed, feeling as if you’re staying the night at a hotel, and hope that in the morning it will feel more like home.