“If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy, well I deserve nothing more than I get, cause nothing I have is truly mine”
June 11, 2012 § 1 Comment
I don’t care how financially extravagant you are or have been, chances are that at one point in your life (one, or like, you know, twelve), you’ve hit up an IKEA to furnish your dwellings. For many, it might have been a few small items, like the ubiquitous paper lamp, or a coffee table, or a $4 wall clock. Maybe after college, you bought your couch there, or a bed, or upgraded to a $16 wall clock, I don’t know.
If you’ve weaved through the masses in the showrooms, you’ve undoubtedly gotten lost in the warehouse, trying to find the correlating numbers to the items you want. Suddenly, the items don’t look as magical as they had in 300 cubic feet of living space, but rather, depressing and daunting in their packaged, unassembled state. Once you’re home, those feelings of intimidation are quickly replaced by frustration and anger when you realize how much freaking work it takes to put together one fucking bedstand.
Despite the fact that my boyfriend and I had moved into a place that was larger than my last three apartments combined, the walk-in closet was incomprehensively small: it could barely contain my wardrobe, let alone both. We contemplated using the second bedroom closet but it was just so inconvenient (my brother stayed with us for a few months) that we were forced to turn to IKEA for a solution. That’s when we stumbled upon their closet systems, becoming wooed by a mirrored version of the Pax wardrobe. When we opened up the boxes and began to assemble, we became near-inconsolably disheartened (and pisssssssed) at the number of times we had to backtrack (ie. unscrew, dismantle, start over, etc.) because we had misread or obliviously skipped the most minor of steps.
The real magic of IKEA lies not in its ability to provide home décor and furniture for the fiscally challenged/conservative, but their ability to make their items look deceptively simple when there are like a bazillion little pieces that make it. Those seemingly no-brainer instructions leave very little room (zero) for deviation; it’s either DO EXACTLY WHAT WE SAY or, smash your face into a particle board.
Not unlike those draconian furniture instructions, I thought the same applied when it came to the succession of literally moving on with your life: you move away for college, you move to an apartment, you buy an overpriced condo, you move to the suburbs, you retire to somewhere with less than twelve inches of rain a year. I remember it was midway through my freshman year in college when the reality had hit me that by moving two hours away from home to start school, I had initiated a series of events that would ultimately mean that never would I again live with my parents, under the same roof. My room would remain my room, frozen with all the tokens of the life I had lived for so long: photos of fresh faced kids wearing lettermen jackets at football games and prom dresses that we’d cringe at years later, tubes of lip gloss that instead of finding their way to the trash bin, remain in drawers for a decade, and closets packed full of failed experiments.
And this notion of “flying the coop” became reaffirmed when I moved into my first apartment the following year, and I was buying a new bed and the aforementioned paper lamps. And while paying for my own utilities felt oddly liberating, I felt saddened that this milestone in my life seemed to have happened without much notice or warning, abruptly yanking me away from the sheltered life in which I had only known.
But you know, life plans lack discipline to stay on course. And for that year I was trying to figure my shit out, I too, like many others, moved back home. At the time I considered it a huge setback, a major divergence from where I thought I should be, emotionally and environmentally. It is only now that I can view that year as one of the most important in recent history, as it became the one I could finally be honest with myself.
Moving back to Seattle symbolized a lot, and driving away with my parents shrinking in the rearview mirror was most certainly heartbreaking – but unlike that initial depart for college, this one felt acutely prepared: an indication that despite what I had thought, I was most definitely growing up.
In the past couple of years, I’ve flown home a handful of times but not nearly enough as I would like. Each trip feels unfairly short, but I always leave feeling just a little bit more revitalized than when I arrived. My room, despite having moved 3,000 miles away, has remained remarkably similar, save for new sheets (I think some of that same lip gloss made the journey). Among the yearbooks collecting dust, new additions have been made over the years, having migrated down to my parents’ whenever they cease in function but linger in emotional attachment (I mean, everyone feels this way about their general chemistry books, right?) My closet has surprisingly thinned out as Honie grows older and finds salvageable pieces to make relevant again.
Consistency. That’s all home is, really. A consistently packed fridge/pantry that’s stocked prior to our arrival with everything Costco could offer. A consistent amount of sweating that occurs when my dad gets cheap about the air conditioning so we’re forced to sit in a room at 79 degrees. Consistent stack of paperwork that has gone conveniently neglected. Consistent burning of the ass on leather seats because the car has been out in the sun. Consistent meals. Consistent laughter. Consistent love.
I’m down here in Florida now, sitting in front of the air conditioning and flipping through Honie’s Teen Vogue. I never bother to put my clothes away when I’m here, no matter how long the stay is, instead opting to let it sit in the most inconvenient spot on the floor as clothes get thrown on and around it. At some point, living out of a suitcase at home became totally normal, as has showering in my parents’ bathroom instead of the one right next to my room. It never feels odd, no matter how long I stay away or how little I am here. I don’t live here anymore but it’ll always be home. I’ll always belong.
I moved away. I moved back. And then I left again. I didn’t follow the instructions. But unlike that monstrous wardrobe system, deviation didn’t mean devastation. Life was a lot more forgiving than a bargain piece of furniture. IKEA could learn from that.
soopastryheart 
But they’re so much fun to assemble.