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I keep it hidden under a sacred glass of nostalgia, untouched, unseen, unheard, and in this way, it has always stayed the same: It was always been mine, nobody could take it away from me another time, and it never faded. At least not inside of me.
Home, I have dreamed of you last night. As I have done so for the past 13 years. And the dreams of you always shake me to my core and remind me of a long lost past, a past that seems more bright and vivid than anything else – but at the same time so distant it feels like I can never touch you ever again. Bulletproof glass seperates us from each other, the type of glass that lets one see everything so clearly, yet never lets one touch the inside. It’s only in these dreams that the wall between me and you gets thinner, and I am almost there… back in time, back at home.
Home, when I think of you I think of snow falling to your ground, hiding the terrace under a white blanket, and me standing next to the huge shell filled with sand, all packed in a thick snowsuite, looking like a human sausage, laughing with glee.
Home, when I think of you I think of gliding down with a sleigh the small hill on top of the terrace, failing to stop at the little staircase at the end of it and nearly crashing against the wall of the house.
Home, thinking of you makes me remember warm days of summer, when I was four and my beloved swing and sandbox were built, and I was very blond and small and sat on the swing for the first time in my life, my little legs dangling about the ground, and my father laughing with me.
Home, thinking of you makes me feel the wind in my hair while I fly with my swing, and my dress floating in the sun, and I hear me sing the stupid little songs that children make up.
Home, thinking of you makes me relive one of the first memories I have, my third birthday and how I was bathing in an ocean of balloons, screaming with joy, my hair sticking out due to the electric effect it had on me.
Home, I keep thinking of my favorite tree, a fir, and how she sheltered me from everyone else if I needed space and kept my secrets for herself, and how we ran around her again and again and played hide and seek under her branches.
Home, do you remember the time when I used to stand behind the kitchen windows, watching the snow fall, waiting for Christkind to come and take my Christmas wishlist with her?
Home, do you still preserve the innocence lost? Is everything still safed and stored in your walls and grounds, even after all these years?
And, Home, do you remember how my heart broke the first time I was told that we were about to leave you? Can you still hear my desperate cries, alone in my room, only muffled by the pillow? Because I still do.
And after all these years, I am still asking what it would feel like to re-enter you, run through the garden and sit under that tree. I have sneaked behind the property two times already, looking down at you through a fens, watching foreign families sitting at our old terrace, foreign children running and playing at the grounds, and wondering what a strange thing time is, and how everything can look so much the same and yet be so very different.
And then asking myself, if I would stand there again, at the fence, would I be able to glide through it as if through thin air, and then re-enter the past, standing there like a visitor, re-witnessing the little, blond girl running across the hill and singing?
I so wish I could.
Because Home, when we left you, nothing was ever the same again. Shadows started to cast themselves upon me and the world around, and in the havoc of it all, the memories of you were pressed into this bulletproof snowglobe, safe from distruction, maybe a little too rose-coloured and idealized, but still completely unreachable.
Some may say I am overly nostalgic and should get over it, for why would one mourn so much for a place as if it had been alive, but all I can say is that you were alive- you were my life, and this life- the innocent, carefree one- died behind the doors, when we closed them forever and gave back the keys.
Mourning for you is more than mourning for a place- it’s grieve for a childhood lost, and a longing for something that is now to be stored forever under bulletproof glass, brighter and more vivid than anything else, maybe sugercoated and idealized, but at the same time so very distant I know I will never touch you again.
(Edit: This was originally posted with childhood pictures, but I put them down due to reasons of personal privacy. Feels more comfortable now. The fir trees in the edited header stand for my connection to the fir tree on my old home’s ground. Hope that didn’t cause any confusion.)
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