This Room

I can hear it quietly raining outside while I listen to old love songs on my phone. This is my first time being back in my hometown in almost two months, and this time it feels different. Since moving out I haven't exactly been eager to come back to my hometown, I have avoided it when possible, but this time it feels so different. I feel uneasy. I feel like a stranger. The room that I grew up in, my safe space since age four, just seems like four walls and a bed. A place I am a guest in, not the place I experienced all my highs and lows. This room made me. Maybe thats what scares me. Laying in here trying to fall asleep is like being trapped in a nightmare. This is the bed I sat in for 2 years when I was sick. This is the bed I cried myself to sleep in every night when I was bullied. This is the room I hid my siblings in when my parents fights escalated, and the room that I hid in when I couldn't take being screamed at any longer. These walls were the only things that separated my fears from reality. They were the keeper of all my secrets, they were still standing by me when I woke up in the morning after a night of silently sobbing myself to sleep. This room made me.

In the past year I have done so much to get away from all that has hurt me. All that has ever held me back. I have found love, I have made friends, I have learned the ability to distinguish fake friends from the ones who truly care for me. I have learned what I want in life, what career I want. I have learned how to be happy. I get to fall asleep and wake up every day beside the most incredible man. A man who makes me feel safe and happy and fills our days with love and laughter. He constantly reminds me I am worth it, he has shown me that life can be good. And that I will be okay. In the last few months since moving in together I have witnessed my anxieties and fears vanishing (side note: I used to believe that no one would ever want to love me). And then somehow I come back to this room, this place that made me the strong, independent woman I am and it doesn't feel like my safe place anymore. These four walls are no longer my home. And in writing this it is clear to me it hasn't been in a long time.

When I started writing this I was upset. It hurt me that I felt discontent when sitting in my childhood room. But now I am realizing that this is okay. This room is not supposed to be my home. This may have been the place I processed what life threw at me but it has no hold on who I became, or who I am today. My safe place is with the man I love. In the city that I picked for myself, not the one I was born in. Home is a person. It is not a place. The fact that this room feels like a hotel is alright, I think any room would feel like a hotel if he wasn't here with me. The tiny bedroom we share back in our house is just a room, it is when he holds me that it becomes home.

This is what growing up is. Adulting is weird. But it is wonderful and new and I love experiencing it. Its moments like this that allow me to learn and grow. They make me grateful for what I have and it makes me appreciate where I have been. It is everything I experienced in this room that led me to him. And that isn't something I would ever change. Two nights in this bed may feel strange, and it may be upsetting to feel out of place in my childhood room but I see now that that is okay.

I have experienced anxiety my entire life, this is one of those moments when my anxiety got the best of me and while laying here in my dark childhood room I was not able to process what I was feeling. That is one of the reasons I started this blog... SO I could vent and share my experiences like this so that maybe someone somewhere experiencing something similar knows they aren't alone. Often my anxieties make me feel crazy, and my boyfriend is the only one who can bring me back to reality. But in moments like this where its 3am and I am in another city I have to process what I am feeling on my own and writing about it has always been a coping mechanism for me. I now feel calmer, and understand better what was going on in my mind.

If you made it to the end of this long, sleepily-written post thank you... Hopefully something I said was relatable and if not that than thank you for being the ear that listened and let me vent so late at night.

Maybe now I will be able to get some sleep...

Love,

M

xoxo

#anxiety #mentalhealth #hometown #fears #love #safeplace #anxious #coping #latenight