It’s been a long time since I showed you guys around my house. Some of you who have been reading my blog since the beginning will have seen glimpses here and there, but even then, I doubt there are very many among you who know where, and with whom, I actually live. It’s one of the only things I’ve been even remotely secretive about; partly because for a long time, home has been a difficult subject for me. It’s been a source of stress, worry, and feelings of frustration. If you’ve read my ‘About’ section you’ll have seen that I move around a lot; usually between my father’s house in Pembrokeshire, my mother’s apartment in Cardiff, and my friend’s flats in London (if I’m lucky). I have never thought of it as my ‘home’, but the only place I really have my own space is in my dad’s place in Pembroke. That has been my base for a few years now, even though there have been times when I have truly hated it and wouldn’t even let my friends come and visit me there. My father isn’t the tidiest of people (no points for spotting the massive understatement) and Pembroke has got to be one of the most soul-crushingly banal places on Earth. I share the upstairs floor of the house with my brother, and my dad has the downstairs. I’ve managed to carve out a haven for myself despite not really wanting to; I’ve seen my friends and my family move on to better places, and for a long time I’ve felt stuck in limbo, unable to join them or move along my own path. After I leave, I probably won’t come back here for a very, very long time; and so I thought I should record it while I still have the chance.
It’s not your typical blogger space. I have my fair share of Yankee candles and decorative orchids lying about, but there is also a lot of random things that no one else wanted, and boxes of stuff I’ve kept in storage. Most of it isn’t photogenic at all, and huge clear-outs are a weekly occurrence in my hoarder household. All my furniture is either an antique or from Ikea. I have two wardrobes full of clothes, and an exposed rail as well. You could say I have a lot of shit. I’m lucky in that my bedroom is really big, by far the largest room in the house, and there’s plenty of room for my king-size sleigh bed that my mum palmed-off to me. Its slats are nearly broken and if you sit down on the bed too abruptly the whole thing falls through, which stopped being funny about two years ago. My windows are really old, single pane glass back from when the house was first built, so when the wind blows outside, it blows in my room too. On the rare occasion that I do have guests over to the house, my bedroom serves as living room, kitchen and sleeping area. And in the evenings it is where my brother and I watch movies and pig out on my bed. I do not think I will miss it when I am gone; I think I will be too busy putting together my new life to think about the past. But I might be wrong.
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