Out of Body

I'm feeling strangely...outside of my life. I'm laying in my childhood bed, in my childhood room, mostly unchanged since I began to occupy it at the age of six. I'm reading about the life of Beverly Cleary, and thinking about my own life. I'm listening to music that used to sing me to sleep every night, and now mostly makes me sad, even though I still like to hear it when the mood is right; I'm full of food, and thinking about my family, and wondering how I got from the girl who slept every night in this pink-and-purple room to the life I am in now. I remember scenes from my life like some sort of movie, a show that I don't quite remember participating in. The last time I slept in this room and actually occupied it, I thought I would grow up to be a famous writer, and that I would marry a man, and that I would live next door to Katie as an old woman and tease her about all our old jokes. I hoped for romance, imagined sex, thought I had a clear understanding of love and heartache, looked forward to beginning college. I somehow thought that nothing would change. And still, things continue to change. My house is full of relics; my old toys, old clothes, old books. Photos of myself everywhere, my parents stopping time for a moment and hanging each moment on the wall. I realized as I was setting the table for dinner that my mother had framed a photo of Alex and I and placed it on a side table; above the table on the wall were photos of Ryan and I at prom, Katie and I at graduation, myself at four riding a rocking horse, wearing nothing but a cowboy hat. My life, all laid out for me to peruse, in random order. And still, I'm not sure how any of it happened, how the journey actually occurred. It's strange to be nearly 25 and staying in my childhood house. It makes me glad I left, and at the same time it makes me want to cry until they promise I never have to go back to an independent life, that I can give it all up and be a child, and feel safe. I thought, looking forward to the holiday, that being at home would be a relief, and in some ways it is, but in some ways not. The house doesn't keep out sadness, or confusion, it's just familiar, and full of more memories than I can hold in my head at once. It's...well, it's interesting, and strange. It's just the kind of thing that I like to write on and on about in a poetic fashion in the middle of the night. ;)