84. The first home I lived in with my dad.

After my parents divorced, I spent a summer living with my dad. It was special.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times that my family and I moved house as a kid. When my parents were together we lived in 8 different houses in three different countries. When they divorced, I was introduced to four more houses after that. I guess you could say that packing, moving my belongings, unpacking and finding new places for everything has always been a part of my life. My favorite part was always deciding where everything was going to live in my new room. The first night that you sleep and the first morning when you wake up in a new home is probably one of my favorite feelings. Everything feels foreign, as if you’re in a hotel on holiday and you don’t know where anything is or how to move through the house. 

I also loved clearing out my closet before packing it all to go to a new house, nowadays I sometimes regret how easily I let go of things, but in the moment that was what I felt was right. 

I’ve never missed any of the houses I lived in because it was second nature for me to always be on the move to somewhere else. I never put roots down anywhere because there was no point. They’d be dug up soon after anyway. Nowhere ever really felt like home in the sense of the word. They were just houses my family and I lived in. A place to sleep, a place to eat and a place to go back to everyday. I guess you could say that I wasn’t attached and I never understood why some people thought that it was so traumatizing or sad to close your home’s front door for the last time. Until I had to say good bye to the house I’d lived in with my dad after the divorce. That hit hard. 

I was I think nineteen at the time. I was studying at university and living in student dorms in a different city so when summer break arrived, I went to stay with him all summer. It was the first time I’d live without my brother and mum in the same home. My brother had already gone off to uni in the UK too, so it was a really strange time. But getting back to the house-I-shared-with-my-dad story. 

It was the first time I was “home” being a bit more of an adult. I was now going out partying, having my own job and money, meeting friends and them picking me up in their cars, cooking alone whilst dad was at work, studying in the living room alone looking out onto the beach. It was a whole new life for me and it was special. The house wasn’t what made it special but the relationship my dad and I formed there. We’d spend long nights on the terrace speaking and opening up. We’d walk to the beach club to have an afternoon drink. We’d sunbathe on the sand with no umbrella for hours (he’s always been an expert at doing this and not dying from heatstroke). We’d listen to music together and take it in turns to tell Alexa what song to play next. We’d go for ice cream with my best friend Ana at our local café. We did a lot of things together now that I think about it. 

I can’t place the exact months and times together in my head, maybe because it was a long time ago and also because a lot has happened since then, but I remember packing up that house and getting ready to leave knowing that I’d never be coming back because he was moving to Dubai. My heart was broken because he was leaving and because I knew deep down that that summer would never exist again. It was a bubble in time and it would always remain as that. Something that happened one summer years ago. 

I took photos of every room of that house, I walked into every room and remembered events from that summer whilst I cried and got ready to say good bye. All of the owner’s paintings were put back onto the walls (there was a sailing theme, maybe because it was opposite the sea?), the furniture was put back into its original layout and all of my dads CDs, vinyls and little random statues were gone. It wasn’t his home anymore, it wasn’t our home, it was someone else’s property we’d lived in and made our home temporarily. That was the first time in my life that I’d put down roots, it was the first time I had a place that made me feel safe, it was a place where I felt happy and I was heartbroken to have to say good bye.

Now, looking back, I’m able to see that I wasn’t heartbroken about never putting my keys in that front door again, I was upset because the relationship my dad and I had built that summer and what I felt was “our place” was blurring and ceasing to exist. 

It took me a very long time to get over the fact that my dad, my protector had moved to another part of the world and that that little beach wasn’t ours anymore. It was anyone’s to enjoy and we weren’t ever going to walk on it again together after dinner. I went back once a few months later with C. and I cried, picked up a shell as a reminder and took it back with me to university. I wrote on the inside of that shell “from our beach” and added the date next to a heart. 

I went through a long grieving process but I guess that time heals all wounds if you work on them, which I have. Maybe I’m reaching the end of the tunnel? Or maybe I’m just getting started? But I know I’m getting somewhere. 

Some life events are better off if they’re short and sweet and that summer by the beach lasted for three months but boy was it special. 

THINGS I THINK ARE WORTH SHARING ❤️‍🩹

READ:

• Naomi Accardi
  really inspires me and I really enjoyed her latest essay about knowing how to swim through monsoons.

• Leticia Sala
  is my latest obsession. I'm obsessed with her books and newsletter. Here's her latest essay about when she started to feel like a mother after giving birth.

• Spanish Mother’s Day had me thinking that not everyone can spend the day with their mother so I thought that this list of books on parental loss by

  Pandora Sykes
  would be something worth mentioning.

WEB

• This website is super cool and you’ll probably come across some other really cool projects while you’re browsing.

• I thought this skincare shop was also really cute/cool.

MUSIC

• I’m in LOVE with this song.

VIDEOS

• I will always recommend Emma Chamberlain, she posted a new video.

• Sofía Ostoic inspires me and one day I will also travel solo like her, watch her new YouTube solo travel vlog.

• I cried my eyes out with the final Carpool Karaoke with Adele 🥹 What a friendship.