Homecoming

This summer I moved back to my parents’ place. It feels a bit awkward coming back home after more than five years. Even though I knew from the very beginning it would be just for a few months, I still felt like an intruder. Invading the privacy of the 17-year old who lived here, who dyed the walls in bright orange, kept dry flowers hanging from the ceiling, collected old postcards and sea shells and recorded her life in colorful notebooks. The only things we still have in common are the colorful notebooks. Apparently, we both thought diaries are only worth writing if the covers are pretty. There was no way to reason with her and refurbish the room, and actually I gave up on that idea pretty fast, this was her own private space and it made no sense trying to change it for the sake of my three months spent here. So I stacked my books where there was still room, dropped somewhere on the floor the boxes that were not be reopened in the near future (she doesn’t seem to mind the newly created chaos), convinced her to change her taste in music so that we’d share my playlist for a while and piled up my clothes in her wardrobe.
One late evening, I stumbled across the box where she kept her old diaries. The hours that followed were some of the most enjoyable I’ve had lately. There’s really no better proof of the growing up process than discovering the process itself, recorded step by step. In the morning, I woke up somewhat confused, guilty of having abused her memories that, in some way, resembled very much to my own.