Living in the same country, the same city, the same district all my life in pretty much the same house….

As we were standing at our broken desk that functions as a kitchen counter, my eyes fell onto the chalk board that’s hanging on the wall next to it. We were going to use that board to write down things that we would easily forget doing and remembering, like groceries and specific household tasks. However, when I turned 30, my man decided to draw me a simple, childlike drawing and I have never wanted to remove it. Time has, however, blurred most of it.

Time… As we stood there, I tried thinking back of when I turned 30. It was the first birthday where I didn’t invite my old school friends whom would be present until my 27th birthday, for the very last time. They had their very adult-y lives now and it was everything that wasnt like the life I was leading with my own dreams and goals: theirs was aimed at becoming parents as soon as possible and working their assess off. Like normal people……..
Thinking back at only 5 years ago into my life, wasnt an easy job, which kind of surprised me. It felt like much longer, but perhaps that’s because the last 16+ months have felt like about 5 months only. Prior to those 16 months, there would still be challenges, even though since autumn 2020 not much would happen as well, due to covid and its stupid wannabe non-useful regulations. A time, after we lost our girl (after losing our very own home on wheels), we would have desperately wanted spending gaining new experiences together as a family of four and showing affection and love to each other more than any other time. But not being able to walk into the woods JUST across the German borders at our happy place (why…? What’s so dangerous about a walk in the woods whilst avoiding others..?) and not being able to go outside in the little “nature” that’s left in our own country because suddenly everyone in this tiny, crowded country would spend their time there, made our germaphobia and compulsories MULTIPLY by the dozens and it made us almost robot-like…
In the time that I’ve been with my man I’ve seen so much more than all those other 26 years combined in my life. Thinking back even farther, from the beginning, it’s like even though I’ve never NOT lived here, my life has been existing of phases where this house wasn’t always home. And with each phase I had a different feeling about everything in this house. Until I was 8, the house would not feel like a home, as I was constantly scared of my mother’s ex (yes, the one who unfortunately gave me life). I didn’t really feel safe anywhere. From 8-11 my mother was extremely ill which almost killed her and she would be very compulsive with a lot of things, so I would be scared often as well and I think I really liked going to school. From my 11th til 17th mother had another horrible ex and I would love spending my time at highschool (or so I thought). But then, after she ditched that ex finally, I had my mother back and I suddenly stopped loving going to school. It turned out I didn’t like school that much either, especially later on as all the peers around me grew up and I was a bit stuck in life and wasn’t ready to spend the rest of my life working. And after I got my labels, I was able to get a social income so yay for me for achieving my goal………
So up from my 18th year – the year my little girl came living with us – I thought I finally was home in the very house Id always been living.
Until I met my man.
And throughout the following years he showed me that home isn’t a house. No matter how long you’ve actually lived somewhere where you think you’ve kind of almost literally grown stuck to that place because you’ve lived all of your life’s phases there doing pretty much the same things every day, that special person and in my case my man, showed me that even in my case in only very little time, anywhere can be home.