I Stepped Into a House That Knew Parts of Me I Had Hidden Away and This is What Happenedfeatured

I recently returned to a place I once stood in 30 years ago.

I didn’t think anything of it at first. I was invited to a family event which just so happened to take place in a house that has been in our family for years. I got ready just as I do for all other occasions. It would be a joyous celebratory day where I would reconnect with my blood relatives and that’s always fun.

My parents and I walked up the driveway and suddenly my heart filled with emotions. I can’t tell you if they were “good” or “bad,” I can only tell you that they began flooding my insides.

It felt like I was stepping back in time to when I was 5. We walked into the courtyard and it looked completely different yet completely unchanged. The red cement was still there and still flaking after all those decades.

And as I stood here, I saw my entire life flash before eyes. I was 35, 25, 15, 10, and 5 all at once. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I examined these different versions of me – little-toddler-me, awkward-age-me, teenage-me, and spiraling-me. Was it the evolution that brought all of this to the fore or was it the margaritas? We may never know.

I snuck into the house and walked down the darkest, longest hallway I used to walk down all those years ago, it was always so eerie to me as a kid. It held so many secrets, that’s something I could feel then and I could confirm now.

If these walls could talk… what would they say?

I felt a veil of sadness, loss, strength, survival, loyalty, and grit encompass the space. These walls were trying to help me recall some semblance of memories but none of them showed up clear within the confines of my mind.

Was I even trying to recall my own memories or somebody else’s?

The nostalgia and bitter-sweetness I felt in this moment told me this house was the setting of a lot of my subconscious dreams throughout the years. I don’t have great memory recall; it could be due to the fact that I grew up in a chaotic environment and had to lock away memories to survive or to at least to function in the way society expected me to function.

It was frustrating to feel all these things but not be able to name the things or the root cause of the things I was feeling. It was as though I was grasping for an alternate reality that I thought only existed in Stranger Things.

“Did you know your mom and dad had their wedding reception in this exact living room and took a really great photo next to that wooden shelf right there?” my aunt said to me.

No, of course I didn’t.

There’s a lot of things I don’t know about my family’s past and some of those things live within these walls.

It seemed these walls knew my shared family history better than I did, or at least knew more than the few insignificant details I could remember.

I know I was dropped off here as a kid, I know I sometimes got to watch scary movies in the room at the end of the scary hallway, I know there was a cuckoo clock, I know there was always food in the kitchen…. and plums, there were always purple plums in this house.

The night went on and the feelings continued to swirl inside of me. I wonder if I could do some woo-woo work to uncover some of the forgotten memories? I will be sure to report back if I choose to take that route.

For now, all I can share is the fact that sometimes emotions can be felt within the body that are unexplainable and that you can’t quite put into a neat little category. They may or may not even belong to you… and that’s okay.

Everything doesn’t need to labeled or understood, sometimes you just need to let your body feel what it needs to feel and long for the memories it may have hidden away for sake of survival.

Love Deeply and Forever,