Have you ever tried setting up a home away from home? Not the one where you call people your home, but where you get a tiny measly nick of a space and you make it your whole sanctuary.
Unlike when buying a house, you don't have the option of musing about who the bed held before you. You try not to wonder where the pillow inside your very thick, very washed pillowcase has been previously. You hope it was someone like you who occasionally wondered where things would go next and tried to do it right. You hope you never find out if you are wrong.
Things you never paid attention to before will start bothering you. Like tall shelves. What is the point of having shelves taller than the tallest books? All that wasted space will haunt you at the most unexpected of times. Like when you are in a home decor shop—and that will quickly become one of your favourite haunts—you will pass on cute, artistic furniture to pick the practical, boring ones. You won't buy anything frivolously, because you have very limited space that belongs to you and you will die before you clutter it up with cute things that do nothing. But you will window shop anyway. Because cute furniture is nice to look at while you wait for them to solve your shelving problem one day.
You learn to not think twice about things like stains of any colour or shape and smells of any kind at any time. You learn instead to think about things like allowing people dignity and privacy especially when you accidentally walk in on them in their varying degrees of decency.
You quickly become good at making people feel welcome and equally good at making yourself feel welcome. You might have a long checklist of what kind of people are your type of people, but you will ignore it all when it comes to the people you share your room with.
It is not a home. It is a pocket of space, a tiny bed, a minuscule fraction of a room. But you will call it home when you are taking leave from your social circle at the end of a tiring day and you will call it home when your mom asks you where you are headed to, and she will not like it that you called it home because she wants your home to be the one she raised you in. You will laugh at this weird display of possessiveness from the person who has always strived hard to set you free and let you sail all kinds of winds.
And you will realise that you have made a home away from home without even wanting or trying.
Published from the archived notes.