Change of Face
It was last year that my sister, Emily, packed her life into the back of the van and took it with her to university. Standing at the door of her vacant, lonely room, or sitting next to her deserted place at the table each day, it became apparent to me that I would soon be facing the same reality. This is my last year of school and I have tried valiantly to stretch it out into an eternity. However, time is a servant to no one, and it has been predictably noncompliant at it does when there are fears or unpleasantness to face in the future. For twelve years, I have been educated in the same familiar and much-loved neighbourhood; for seventeen years I've lived in the same house and shared my days with my mother, father, pets, and best friends. My life at home has been a fondly cherished and well-thumbed album of Kodak memories. Yet when the final grains of sand have fallen from this hourglass that has been my life until this point in time, I must shake myself free of the tatters of this old skin when the glass is turned and my new life begins.
I am a creature of habit, and these new times - these changing times - make my skin tingle and my stomach clench tight. Give me great hairy spiders, give me pitch-black darkness, give me provincial exams, but don't let me grow up. It is not so much a fear of the unknown from which I shy away, but I am so horribly afraid that this new life will change me and change this place that I call home into something that I can no longer recognize. Home is the refuge I return to everyday, away from the boldness and bluster of the world, and if I leave now, will I ever find the road back? Yet I can see this change that I fear occurring in my sister, and I wonder if taking up this new mantle is the terror I've foreseen. She is growing and changing - and I suppose that she thinks that we at home are too - but she is finding her self-confidence and she has come to fit this new life she has donned. I suppose that if Emily can manage to build another home for herself, it is possible that I can achieve the same. Watching what this change has evoked in my sister leads me to believe that I am ready to venture into this future: to confidently press hands to this clay and reshape my life and myself as I have only dabbled in lightly before. When I am finished - if there is completion - I will know that I am the same product that I left home with, and I will reflect my past experiences, but I will have become what I have chosen and formed for myself, a comfortable, familiar home inside me.
It was last year that my sister, Emily, packed her life into the back of the van and took it with her to university. Standing at the door of her vacant, lonely room, or sitting next to her deserted place at the table each day, it became apparent to me that I would soon be facing the same reality. This is my last year of school and I have tried valiantly to stretch it out into an eternity. However, time is a servant to no one, and it has been predictably noncompliant at it does when there are fears or unpleasantness to face in the future. For twelve years, I have been educated in the same familiar and much-loved neighbourhood; for seventeen years I've lived in the same house and shared my days with my mother, father, pets, and best friends. My life at home has been a fondly cherished and well-thumbed album of Kodak memories. Yet when the final grains of sand have fallen from this hourglass that has been my life until this point in time, I must shake myself free of the tatters of this old skin when the glass is turned and my new life begins.
I am a creature of habit, and these new times - these changing times - make my skin tingle and my stomach clench tight. Give me great hairy spiders, give me pitch-black darkness, give me provincial exams, but don't let me grow up. It is not so much a fear of the unknown from which I shy away, but I am so horribly afraid that this new life will change me and change this place that I call home into something that I can no longer recognize. Home is the refuge I return to everyday, away from the boldness and bluster of the world, and if I leave now, will I ever find the road back? Yet I can see this change that I fear occurring in my sister, and I wonder if taking up this new mantle is the terror I've foreseen. She is growing and changing - and I suppose that she thinks that we at home are too - but she is finding her self-confidence and she has come to fit this new life she has donned. I suppose that if Emily can manage to build another home for herself, it is possible that I can achieve the same. Watching what this change has evoked in my sister leads me to believe that I am ready to venture into this future: to confidently press hands to this clay and reshape my life and myself as I have only dabbled in lightly before. When I am finished - if there is completion - I will know that I am the same product that I left home with, and I will reflect my past experiences, but I will have become what I have chosen and formed for myself, a comfortable, familiar home inside me.