Home sweet home

I love my room. I love the reds and blues and greens of the posters, I love that so much of it is made up of my artwork, I love my blue lamp that’s been around longer than I have, I love the dim yellow light at night that wraps me warmer than my blanket, especially on cold crisp nights. The only thing I don’t love about it is my curtains. Those pastel rainbow colors pinstriped on cream fabric roped down the length of the walls invite a rather circus-y ambiance that I am not very fond of.

There are few places in this world that make me feel as safe and cozy as my room. I’ve spent so much time curating it to its glory today. Years of collecting knick-knacks: photo booth strips in Florence, posters from street stands lining the Seine in Paris, little animals carefully whittled from wood in Switzerland, and most of all, clocks, gadgets, books, and trays silently stolen from the unseen corners of my apartment. They seem to belong only to the apartment in their clearly unused and unnoticed demeanor, having no claim by either parents or siblings, so I saw no harm in adopting them into my own miscellaneous inventory.

I love the feeling of switching on my blue lamp and watching the honey glow from the cobalt bulb that encases it. I think it calms me so much because it is used only by the time dusk has well passed, and I am freshly showered, ready to retire from my grievances of the day. Although every now and then it halts in functionality and ceases to light because as I previously said, it’s been around longer than I have. The lamp is bound to have its off days, sometimes months, but it always seems to eventually light up again. I just have to try to turn it on every single day until one evening, when I least expect it, the same cool glow that hurts to touch returns.

I have this wall decal fish thing I pasted on my window when I was 5. I only vaguely remember this but it was one of those weird 2000s products where you were given a tracing of a design and you could “draw” it on your window with a glue-like concoction. What I (or my parents) didn’t realize at the time was that this thing was permanent.

It’s funny because I grew up in this apartment but had a three-year hiatus between 2018 to 2020. In that entire time of my vacancy, no one had budged or removed the fish decal window paste at all, though I’m sure it’s been attempted. It stands the test of time, this weird blob of clear, black, and aqua that forever remains a totem of my childhood. I love it too. Maybe the most.

I think the preciousness of my room is preserved by these little things scattered in every corner, ensuring it remains a growing time capsule. Comfort stems from its worn-in manner.

Worn in by my kindergarten self, screaming at the top of my lungs jumping up and down the bunk bed my dad built for me. Also by my middle school self, experiencing the first tribulations of my life, wondering what to wear to daunting social events. Worn in by my early high school self, loathsomely planted face down on the wood-paneled floors because life felt too unimportant to endure.

And worn in currently by my same self, more mature but fundamentally unchanged.

A room that’s been lived in and that’s grown in time. Like an old childhood friend you mark each chapter of your life with. A constant and immovable reflection of yourself manifested in the taped-up magazine cutouts on the walls, or half-burnt candles sitting on nightstands.

On the quiet weekend mornings when I wake up a little too early because I’m adjusted to the weekday 6 am alarm, the light peeks perfectly through the 18-inch space I leave between my curtain and windowsill. Just enough so that the floor by my bed is softly illuminated by the morning light which has not yet become abrasive as it does by the time 10 am rolls around. I can see the crystal reflection of my weird fish window paste on the radiator and usually remain in this half-asleep melody—where time stands still and the city traffic has not yet been heard—for longer than I’d like to admit.

‘Tis the season

Survival of the fittest