Writer's Block Magazine

I’ve never had sex in my childhood bedroom. Never came back to it drunk, never felt like throwing up while sitting on the bed early in the morning. I never switched out my old plushies with new ones bought by new friends and new boyfriends. My window was never cracked open for people to smoke inside, and my carpet was never scrubbed clean after a party. I didn’t wonder at the idea of life after university, I didn’t worry about what moving in with that boy would mean for us, I didn’t search the internet for my own GP. But that ceiling and that floor, those corners and cracks that looked like a matchbox but felt quite infinite were, perhaps, the most beautiful kingdom ever built. It was there that I learnt how to count and it was there that I believed the right people would always make the right choices. It was there that I never knew what moving on meant, too. 

I know people like to say we didn’t notice. Didn’t notice when the walls of our bedrooms became a bit too full of old memories, or when we came back to them after a long day at school for the last time. But I think we did. We noticed how the light stopped and wavered on our desks and we noticed how, when the night came, the dark was just a bit darker than usual. We noticed how our feet were suddenly long enough to touch the floor when we were lying in bed, noticed the chipped edges on our door, and the slight screech of the lock, noticed how shaky the hinges on our wardrobes were. And I think we noticed when the colouring books got replaced with grammar books, and the grammar books with laptops, and how one day we took those laptops away too, with nothing else to leave behind. And when we looked at the clock and understood why and how the hands move – I think we also noticed that. Just as much as how we noticed the maps on our phones were not leading to the same three places we had always known anymore. We noticed when we stopped reaching for the remote to put on cartoons because the news channel felt more interesting. We noticed when laughing turned into smiling, which turned into grinning, which turned into looking back over our shoulders to see if someone else was grinning, too. We noticed how the highs were really high, the lows really low, and how the space between seemed empty.

More than anything, I think we noticed how it hurt just a bit, just enough for it to stick with us, when our bones got bigger and our eyes grew heavy, and maybe even when counting sheep to fall asleep stopped working. I think it stung and I think we felt as if that ache had got caught somewhere inside of us – somewhere so deep that with every move, it shifted and it poked, and it prodded, and it sometimes even drew blood. And I think, at some point – and pretty quickly at that – the pain numbed so much that we forgot it was ever there to begin with. But we still limped when passing our bedroom door and we still tripped and stumbled whenever the home number lit up on our phones. We still held back tears; we still choked on some of our words. 

There is, however, one thing I don’t think we noticed. I think we were a bit busy, or stressed, or maybe quite happy, actually. But I don’t think we ever truly noticed just when our bedroom stopped being ours and started being theirs – all those millions of little, young people living somewhere on the edge of today and tomorrow. Because at some point, our bedrooms stopped existing in present tense, and at some point, we were old enough to drive, and drive away, and live alone in small rooms with big windows. And at some point, in those small rooms, we made our first big world wishes. We wished for luck and love, for friends who listen, for good finances, nice towels, cheaper frozen chicken and fresher vegetables. We wished for an easy conscience, and we desperately wished for a pair of kind eyes and warm hands. We wished on stars and then we wished on candles and then, rarer still, we wished on eyelashes. Once it started, the wishing never stopped.

And just like that, the world didn’t stop when that room wasn’t ours anymore. The world didn’t stop when our parents began seeing fewer and fewer traces of us, and it didn’t stop when we left them the keys to the front door. It didn’t even skip a beat. No, the world went right on. And us alongside it. The wheels kept turning, the tracks kept changing, the clouds kept moving. Without fail. It was different, and scary, and permanent. We finally had sex, and came back drunk, and felt like throwing up while sitting on the bed. And I think that’s okay. 

It’s okay. 

And those little, young people? They know it’s okay, too.

Written by Clara Pistol