A Place of One’s Own

In a few weeks, I’ll have moved out of my parents house for nearly a year. I’ve been busy these last few weeks with a lot of this and that, which has precluded any sort creative thinking, so I’ve decided to write a little piece on living by myself. Not much reflecting going on here, just a disorganized collection of thoughts.

It’s not as though I’ve spent my entire life living in my parents’ house. But I have spent more time there than not, and it was nice living there. I was fed, clothed, and boarded, and never had to consider groceries, laundries, or cleaning. Sure, I did the dishes frequently and sometimes helped with yardwork, but all my essential needs were met. Sometimes, my mother even made my bed.

In between, I’ve lived at homestays, in college residences, at my grandparents’ house, and various rented accommodations with other people. I’ve had to feed myself food, launder my own clothes, and take charge of my schedule. But all those accommodations felt temporary; even in college I’ve never lived in one place for longer than eight months. And the bar for acceptable lifestyle was extremely low: by keeping my room clean, I was already doing better than half my peers, and by occasionally cooking, I placed myself in the top quartile.

In my college years, I lived with anywhere from four others to six others in fifty-year old houses subject to constant abuse: night and day, weekends and weeknights. Not only were shoes worn inside, a few days a month I was concerned about dirtying my white shoes by wearing them inside the…