Everything ends. Situations change. People change. Nothing stays the same. I sat on a bed that wasn’t mine staring up at a ceiling that belonged to someone else. The four walls were a foreign hue of good intentions and false representations. The ever so evident smell of fresh paint and new carpet forbade me from falling back into a false reality. Morning sun crept through the window and I crumbled back into the inviting covers afraid to face the day.

When we moved everything changed. No longer could I walk down the street and play baseball with my friends. No longer could the comforting sound of the freeway lead me to sleep at night. No longer could I gaze up at cathedral ceilings that seemed a mile high to my young mind.

How was I supposed to know at the time that the house that built me could also tear me down. I sat, staring up at the ceilings one last time. Golden rays of sun shown through the windows triumphantly driving out the darkness of night. The house seemed a hollow shell without the usual sound of laughing children and the aroma of cooking food. I looked into the dining room where countless meals had been served to eager family and friends. Now it sat dormant with nothing but echos of clinking silverware and boisterous laughter. My eyes wander to the kitchen where I came home from school one day to find a cardboard box with two sleeping puppies wrapped up in blankets.
“Lets go” my moms voice awakens me from from my daydream. I rise, pick up my backpack and move towards the front door. It shuts behind me in a way that I still remember to this day. The door closed with such finality, like a vault with no key locking forever. It was the closing of one door, and the opening of another. I regret not going back in one last time.


We had been trying to move for years. I never thought it would actually happen. We looked at countless houses. None were what my parents wanted. Why didn’t they ever ask what I wanted to do? I suppose it was because they already knew what I would say. When they told us, I sulked in disbelief for days. Fear of the unknown caused me to start doing badly in school. At one point I remember plotting to rip up the final papers if I ever found them. Anything to show that I didn't want this.
I still drive by it sometimes. Its been resold three times in the seven years after we moved out. Three more families have called it home. But it was the only house that I ever called home. Hold on to what you have. Never take anything for granted, because often times it doesn’t last.