Everyone gets that warm and comfy feeling when you walk into your home and everyone is where it has always been. Mom and dad in the kitchen getting dinner ready, your sibling sitting at the table working on homework, and the over flowing emotions of having some memories flow back into your mind when you were having your 5th birthday party with all your friends sitting at that same counter.
No one will ever prepare you for the moment you have to pack up all your belongings and say bye to a house that has all your memories.
Being a twenty-year-old college student, you are supposed to leave home and you start your life. Most kids go back to a home that was always been there, with there family in the same spot they left them at. Coming home from break to a house that isn’t yours and does not have any memories of who you were can be heart breaking in a way. I have always been taught home is where the heart is… I left my heart in a home I might never get back.
There are an infinite amount of emotions one can go through and feel during this time, but here are 5 emotions most commonly felt when moving out of your childhood home:
1. Shock
Hearing the news of having your child hood home being put up on the market comes as a shock. Most will never understand this feeling, and some will. This is something that is almost so out there that it is hard to believe at first. Once the initial shock is over there is a mix of many emotions- some that are hard to explain, and others that can be read on your face. You are left sitting down and not knowing how to express yourself, and the while you are doing that you are handed a list of things that need to get done in an incredibly short time frame.
2. Realization
It comes in waves in a way, some days you wake up like nothing happened and some days you wake up to hearing your mom moving boxes and talking to a listing office. That is when it slowly settles in that “oh! I am going to have to start packing! I do not even know where to begin.” After that starts to settle in you are almost at a loss for words when people ask you “how is the move going?”
3. Overwhelmed
You start to lose focus on all those memories you put in a box and start to become overwhelmed with a dead line you never signed up for. It starts to become a race to the finish line, you and your family are going through things and moving stuff to the side and putting stuff in boxes closing them up and moving on to the next item on the list. You start to forget those memories you once had and start to look at the time and having a list of uncompleted things.
4. Stressed
Nothing is more stressful than having to plan out in a short time frame everything that needs to get put into a box and things that need to get put in the trash can. The stress starts to take over in a way, you start to lose focus on the main thing, YOU ARE PACKING UP YOUR CHILDHOOD HOME. The worst is having to be strong and having to act like this isn’t one of the hardest you must do.
Walking around a house used to be filled with so familiar with sounds. From the laughter of one’s friend, the smell of a home cooked meal when you stayed home with the flu, to the first time you broke up with the person you thought was your forever. Then that all turns into you walking around a house that is filled with sounds of boxes being pushed, the smell of take-out because we don’t have enough time or anything to cook with, your friends sitting outside in the same spot you guys always sat laughing, crying tears of sadness because you will not be just a 5-minute drive.
5. Sadness
Nothing is more heart breaking than walking into an empty house that was once filled with laughter and joy. The sadness does not really hit you until you drive away and look back and see a house that is no longer yours, when you are packing you get lost in the monotonous movement of shoving valuables in boxes, when you have time to stop packing your mind gives you a list of things you still need to pack for the next day. Your mind does not stop for a second to give your heart a chance to feel sad.
When you look back on the good things in life some take you back to the home you once grew up in, some take you back to that comfort zone you once had. One day you wake up and your world has kind of changed.
Everyone tells you that “It is just a house, you will make new memories In your new one.”
But some forget that it might not just be a house that holds memories, but you will never be able to walk around that house and feel comfortable, you will not be able to run to your room and feel safe again. You will have to adjust to a new place with new rooms, new location, and a whole new chapter of memories.
When doing last walk through, walking through an empty house with nothing but different color walls. It doesn’t feel like what most people see in movies where they spin around, just sigh and walk out. You’ll rushed back and forth between rooms, halls and closest to make sure everything was gone. Get into the car buckle up, back out of the driveway and look back just once to see the house.
However, you won’t see a house, you’ll see all the emotions that were trapped in my heart due to the overwhelming part of moving rushed out. That’s when it hits you that you just left your childhood home.