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I Feel Like a Jilted Lover.

For all the positivity in the previous posts, I suffer. My health is better, but it isn’t. 

I am not immune to sadness, as much as the past days have made me feel like it. I miss home. I don't know why.

I heard my brother and my parents fight on the phone. Frustrating and annoying. But I want it right now. I want my room. I want my pillow. I want the torn mattress, which is probably why I am no longer as immune as I was.

My lungs are yellow. Foam fills them. Lots of it. My mattress that has lost tiny chunks of itself over the years like someone bit into it. I haven't but you might find it in my skin. My face has flattened against it a million times, i have breathed it in since my birth.

If you ask my half-peeled and hardened feet what they know the most, they will say they have met these specific cold tiled floors that my home has. They will still have them. It's just that I will never walk on them again.

It's materialistic, I know. I should be grateful. I am. But in this process of venting and only in the aftermath can I ridicule myself for complaining about losing a house I have lived in for eighteen years. I am lucky.

I miss the things. I miss that they aren't all around me to remind me of the countless memories I have had. I miss that the walls that have seen me through everything will disappear.

I know they won't. They will see another teenage girl, apparently. But I don't want to know of it. I feel like a jealous lover.

Insecurity in my love for my home.

The dad of the new family came over while I was at home to look around the new house. I wasn't a coward. I hid in the big bathroom for no reason. I wasn't like this, I never did this.

I was scared I would be ugly. I felt like my face would twist into some expression of rage that I didn't know was in me. Of course, that didn't happen. I was mature, right?

I was a little child; my home was my toy. No one else could take it; it was all mine. I knew in the long run, this would never be my home. Maybe I would have internalized that if we had repeatedly moved. But no, circumstances had me love that place so deeply. Every crack in the walls and bubbles on the ceiling memorized. The lines between the tiles telling me where I was.

I knew it like the back of my hand. I know it like the back of my hand. If I was blindfolded, I could tell my way around easily, where all the tables and chairs lay, where everything was placed. I could tell you about the painting on a tree stump I did five years ago. I could tell you about the pink yarn tied to the window sill, dusty and hanging on by a thread. A popped balloon attached to it. I could tell you when the grills of the window were attached. 

I could tell you why this was the second set of house keys. I could tell you which window I used to jump through to open the front door. I could tell you why my feet didn't mind stones and sand. 

I could tell you why there's a set of bricks inside the parking space. I could tell you why the trees in our yard are there and where we got them from. I could tell you why there's a part of the bathroom wall, a small gap between the white tiles where it's written massage sending. Not message. Massage.

I could tell you, but I can't. Just as my parents grew up in their tharavads, this was mine. I didn't choose this. I didn't not choose this. I grew up there. I can't change that; I can't rip away the part of me that was influenced by it. I knew it was temporary, but it still hurts.

I wonder if the new girl of the family moving in would like my room as I did. I loved the glorious amount of sunlight my room had.

I wonder if my milk teeth still lie on the roof of my home. I wonder if they will ever find my lost things. Along with it, my home.

I understand it’s not mine to lose. I know the walls won’t miss me, the tiles will soon warm beneath someone else’s feet, and the ceilings will gaze upon new faces. I know someone will cut down the trees we planted. I know home is a feeling, not a place.

But this home was a place that held that feeling for so long, it's become one. 

I hope it's loved. 

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