A Treasure Found at Home

i had a bit of insomnia last night. my sleep was all out of whack due to a wonky sleep and food schedule (loved the dancy dancy, didn’t love being paged). i lay in bed reading a bonus book when i was buying a collection of short stories that had been recommended on one of the blogs i read.

‘the perks of being a wallflower’ is written as a collection of letters from charlie to someone we don’t know, who doesn’t know charlie. i loved this format. the reader really gets a chance to see inside the character’s mind in a way i’m not used to. not only do we see what he figures out and what he’s thinking, but we see *as* he figures it out sometimes. what he discovers about himself, about his past and the way he relates to the world, about ‘participating’… the story completely sucked me in.

usually i picture high school stories as taking place in my high school, and this one was pretty easy to do since it takes place during what was my senior year. it reminded me of what it felt like back then. the airiness of being in high school. everything felt different, somehow, than it feels now.

and as i lay in bed considering that feeling of high school i also felt the nagging guilt of not having cleaned the house in a long time. and it seemed strange, but i began to wonder if there was a connection there. the empty (even though that’s not quite the right word), big, airy feeling of being that age. was it really just high school? was it not having real responsibilities like a mortgage or even rent? sometimes i wonder if i just didn’t believe that decisions i made then, day to day what class to take and who to date sort of decision, could make a lasting impact on my life.

but when i think of it more, the big airiness of it all seems to center around my house. sure, we lived literally on the edge of the neighbourhood so that all i saw from my window were empty fields. really empty fields cut through with alleys and streets. ‘they’ had prepared the lots for housing already so it was mostly all dirt until you got to the next town north. i could see the next town from my window, and the border was marked by a row of trees along a street where my now current, then future boyfriend would race cars on the weekends. but i’ll keep the story of falling asleep to the sound of his squealing tires for another day.

i started to wonder if it wasn’t the big, empty, airiness of my parent’s house that helped set the tone for my high school years. our house had high ceilings, 24 ft ceilings in some places, and rooms we almost never used, sofas no one ever sat on. it was a lot of empty. my friends didn’t always like to come to my house and it was hard to explain to my parents why we didn’t ever want to hang out there. it wasn’t comfortable. my friends called it ‘the museum’ and it reminded us of the showrooms in furniture stores where you’re afraid to touch anything.

this is not what i want for my home. i want a cozy, warm, easy, yet clean, home. i need to learn how to strike that balance. i need to remember that not all empty space feels white and intimidating. i need to clear out a bunch of stuff and feng shui more people into my living room. i want to ‘participate’ more and be less of a wallflower.