Sunday Scribblings: Why I live where I live

This is the post I would have written even without the prompt from Sunday Scribblings as today is the one anniversary of my arrival in this rented two-bedroom flat, three storeys up, ten minutes from the sea. Two months after the man I loved died from a heart attack, I left my flat in London and returned to my hometown. When the lettings agent first showed me around this flat I did not believe I would ever be able to fill the space as I had nothing – no furniture, no future, no hope, yet now I look around me and see colour and life in every corner and on every surface. Furnishing this apartment gave me something to think about when all I wanted to do was stay in bed and sleep forever.

The man on the television behind me has just said this sentence: “the act of building is the physical tangible expression of promise”. He is talking about Russian architecture, but that sentence sums up everything I am trying to express tonight. Moving into this flat I gave myself the space to grieve. Moving into this flat I was forced to rebuild myself, forced to believe that one day I would live again. Each piece of furniture I bought was a promise to myself that one day I would be okay, and that wanting that was not a betrayal of all that had gone before. The walls have been painted in my tears, the rooms filled with ghosts, the sheets on my bed are imprinted with my yearning for a man who will never again lie with me – or to me.

This flat represents my phoenix-self, risen from the blackened remains of my old life. It is within these four walls I have had to relearn everything I thought I knew about life. I have found answers to some questions, and accepted that some answers will never be found. This afternoon my goddaughter told me she loves my flat – being here, in this town, has allowed me to reconnect with friends and family and retread paths I walked along as a child, a teenager, a young woman. I have come home in all senses of the word.  I have found a strand that will lead me to the future and picked up the unravelling end of a life I thought I had left behind long ago.

This flat doesn’t just house all my worldly goods; this flat is me.

** The picture above is of my beautiful godchildren. I worship the ground their little feet walk on, even if they do get chocolate on my pristine white sofa. For more Sunday Scribblings go here.