Issue #3: On moving out, moving on and what home can look like 🏡

Here to share 28 weekly newsletters to document the thoughts, struggles and joys of self improvement as a 24 year old.

The day you catch your flight: On to bigger things

You have planned everything to the T, because this was a long time coming. As your flight hits the ground, you realise you accidentally got the hotel booked starting tomorrow. As the panic from that situation settles in, your cab gets into an accident. One week into moving into your new home, you get trapped inside the washroom for over an hour. You still don’t trust locks that turn. Welcome to adulthood. We’re all trying our best here.

The first 2 months: On finding your ground

The two bedsheets you brought from home take turns adorning the bed you sleep on. You buy yourself flowers for the first time. You knew there would be bills to pay but having to buy your own garbage bags hits differently. Being able to afford one more ceramic coffee cup makes you feel unexplainably powerful.

There is a new found anxiety of carrying your keys everywhere and trying too hard to never lose them. You are horrified to realise that the better weather didn’t fix your acne issues.

You finally understand why the minister of loneliness had abolished email. Sorry, context:

The Minister of Loneliness has abolished email. He is installing tin cans to every windowsill, With a piece of string to someone else's window. Not several, just one. Each person of course does not need a lot of people to speak to, just the one. But the one must be reliable. Must be available when needed - We are employing a buddy system now. Every day is a field trip to the adulthood museum, and we don't go home until everyone has been accounted for.

-Sarah Kay, “The minister of loneliness”

Six months in: On finding your people

You have just as many plants as the number of months you’ve called this city home. You give in and finally update home in google maps and the five other apps you use for grocery shopping. This simple act to save yourself the pain of manually entering your current address feels like a betrayal to the pinned location you called home for years before.

You meal prep now. You think back to all your pinterest-y dreams of what your room would look like when you moved out. You go to bed in peace believing this turned out even better. The years seemed to have rushed past you like a train on a mission. You realise there were a lot of days between then and now.

You are thrilled to realise that some of your childhood friends’ lives have also strung them to your city. But you also quickly realise that you’ll always be second in their lives, that there will be meet ups you will never be invited to. You write that off as the price you must pay for moving away at 13 and never going back. It’s a game of catch up you will never be able to win. You almost don’t want to.

So you organise a Secret Santa with your college friends spread across the country. While you get only one physical present, you are acutely aware of the fortune of even having a fleeting sense of belongingness. You know this helps them too.

On a quick visit back to home

A quick glance around the room tells you what you need to know as a welcome. The flour-kneading hands of your mother are just the same but your dad has lost weight, and your brother has put some on. There is a new sofa-bed but the coffee table is the same from 2017. Your bed is the same from 2005. The soft toys, books and trophies you have gathered for the last 2 decades stand tall on the bookshelf you bought with your first salary.

You’re not quite sure when you’ll come next. You’re not quite sure how you feel about that.

Ten months strong : On finding yourself

On a regular Wednesday morning in your new life in 2023, you wake up grateful for the sunshine that hugs you first thing in the morning. A warm reminder of what the rest of your life can look like. As you get ready in an outfit that’s so perfectly you, you can’t help but smile at how well you have figured yourself out.

The anxiety and sleep issues from 2020 have left very few traces in your being. They only come back on your worst days. You know how to tackle them now, thanks to years of experience. You realise you are so utterly content with how the universe and you have made this happen. You realise that there is joy in growing up and moving out, even with its imperfections and occasional loneliness.

You are thrilled to be able to host countless sleepovers with your friends from college. You’re still figuring out how you like your coffee best, what form of physical activity you truly enjoy and your take on whether you can fully adopt podcasts and kindle. You see, after everything, your preferred mode of knowledge transfer remains a heart to heart conversation, or a hardcover book.

Your room has now started to feel more homely than you ever imagined it would. You have celebrated enough festivals to have a heart full of memories. But more importantly, you have broken down in front of your flatmate after your worst days in the hall. You’ve had dinner in your balcony with friends who’ve showed up to help you heal. You’ve arranged a football screening session just because you derive immense joy from feeding people popcorn and coke.

While you too, have changed in unimaginable ways, you realise it’s the last page of a random book you read at your lowest (unsurprisingly in 2020) that continues to tie together your perspective on life.

Because we made it through this day as well. There’ll be another one along tomorrow.

-Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

And I, for one, can’t wait to see what tomorrow has in store for me.

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