This is what I've got!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Moving Out

She stared around her room, wondering where to start from. 2 cup-boards,  2 book shelves, a table – she had to sort out the stuff inside all these before they moved into the new apartment.

She decided to tackle the biggest challenge first - the cup-board. 

She pulled all the clothes down onto the floor and picked up one by one, folded them and started organising them into cartons. 

She dreaded any kind of arranging and cleaning. Just a waste of time! But this time she agreed on packing her stuff cuz she didn’t trust anybody else with her personal things. She liked her privacy.

Deep inside her mind, she felt miserable. And it had nothing to do with packing. She felt miserable because she was leaving this place – her room, her home – soon. 

Well, she thought, no point in getting all teary-eyed now. Better concentrate on the work at hand. That's when she noticed what she was holding – her favourite black n red tank top. She had worn the very same top during her IT Quiz finals. And during many other quiz competitions, so to speak. It was her lucky charm. She was unbeatable if she had it on. And she remembered mom’s orders – “ throw away anything that’s old and used up. Take only necessary items into the new apartment”. Yes, the thing was obviously old. But how could she throw away her lucky charm?

She decided to tuck it into some corner of the carton and continued her “sorting-out” job. She came across the red skirt she had worn when she met him for the first time. And there was the purple pull-on, a gift from grand dad just 2 weeks before he died. And the black shrug – the tantrums she had throw to get her hands on that last  year! And her denim jacket, she thought she had lost it. The more garments she pulled out, more special moments and memories flashed in her mind. Never ever in her life did she think that folding clothes could get this emotional!

Enough is enough. 

She moved on to her book shelves. The real nightmare, she knew, were the stacks of paper “adorning” a whole shelf. Carefully, she lifted a stack onto her lap and examined the papers one by one. Most were just rubbish, stuff that had accumulated just because she was too lazy to carry them into the garbage bag outdoors. Still, in many of the stacks there were things that caught her attention. 

Like the notes she and her friends had passed  back and forth during classes. She remembered with a laugh the times they had been caught in the act.

Then there were her revision notes which comprised mostly of names of singers and authors or her favourite book quotes rather than what she was actually supposed to revise. 

There were friendship cards and birthday cards given by her friends. There were dozens of maps and outlines and she remembered her horrifying map-drawing assignments with a smile. There were incomplete projects, picture charts, question papers, answer sheets, impositions sheets and song lyrics. And each of them had a story of its own.

She picked up books and started piling them in cartons. There were books she had forgotten about. She was surprised that she had actually read some of those kids stuff. She saw the GK books that had saved her throughout her quizzing.  And then, there were the classics – she always took the longest time to read those. Many of them were gifts from her friends and family, and she remembered the numerous occasions. Definitely, she was NOT going to leave even a single book behind. She could not resist the urge to flip through their pages and skim through some of them. In her mind, she saw her transition from a little girl who loved Goldilocks and The Three Bears to the young woman who enjoyed A Thousand Splendid Suns. She had come a long way..

On the table, there were her school books. And they were arranged neatly. Ofcoz, she wasn’t surprised. Only things that were used got disarranged. 

After keeping the last book into the carton, she stood back and gazed around. 


The shelves were bare, the cupboards were empty and her table and bed didn’t have the usual litter on it.

It dawned on her that she would never walk around this room again, mugging on the eve of exams.

She realised that she would never have a pillow fight with her brother on this bed again.

She realised that she wouldn’t dance around in this room again, singing her favourite songs.

She realised that she would never look
in the mirror on the wall again and curse her pimples or exclaim her long lashes.

She realised that she would never again be able to stand in the balcony and cry after a fight with her parents. 
Her safe haven did not belong to her anymore.
                  
With a single tear running down her cheek, she realised that she hadn’t only packed up her things, but she had relived those unique and special moments in her life. She had gone on an emotional roller-coaster ride of memories.

She knew that she wasn't just leaving her old home. She was leaving a big and irreplaceable part of her life.

Yes, she will miss this place badly.

4 comments:

  1. *sniff* *sniff* *crying*
    I can't believe you're MOVING!

    Nice one, by the way. After all the times we sat and talked there, I could easily imagine you packing up. Sigh... Now I realize, I will miss E5 too. :(

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  2. *sigh* I know! Lets hope we have an equally good time in 6CS(that's the new apartment's no.by the way) as well :)

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  3. housewarming wishes.....have more beautiful days in new home....

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