Items From My Childhood Bedroom
The door. My door was once covered in drawings and signs that boldly warned, “GIRLS ONLY.” I had an acrostic poem with each letter of my name representing a positive quality of myself. I don’t remember when I took that all down. I remember sleeping with the door halfway open and at the least, slightly ajar. I was scared of the dark, of monsters living under my bed, and of intruders sneaking in my window. But the light coming from the hall kept me safe at night.
The growth chart. Sporadically drawn lines and tick marks with accompanying dates. My mom compulsively updated this section of the wall during my early teen years. I would get so excited when I visibly grew, beaming as my mom would proudly say, “You’re a big girl!” I can tell when my growth spurt starts and ends. I remember the feelings of awkwardness, lankiness—what boy will like me if I am taller than him?
The bed. Countless nights, sleepless or peaceful, spent here. Dreams of romantic ideations and anxiety-inducing hypotheticals. Hiding under the covers. Sneaking boys in at night and kissing them.
The full length mirror. Taped to its frame are pictures spanning from my infancy to my adolescence. Most of these photos are with my high school friend group—5 boys and 5 girls—whose friendships I thought would never fade. There are photos of my best friend who suddenly passed away when I was 16. In high school, I looked at myself in this mirror and asked myself, ‘Why does your stomach look like that? Don’t you have any self-control? When will you finally grow into those bras you bought prematurely?’
The dresser. Always stuffed with the clothes that matched my aesthetic of the time: dark colors and graphic tees for my emo phase in my pre-teen years, Hollister and Abercrombie tees, thermals, and cardigans for my early teen years, Bohemian tank tops and traces of feather extensions for mid-teenhood. Presenting myself through fashion has always been important to me. I feel as if, without it, I would disappear into the background. When I come home now, it’s only for short periods of time, so I live out of my suitcases. The dresser is left as a time capsule.
The nightstand. Once filled with books that my mom would read to me at bedtime while stroking my back, it now holds my abandoned diaries and unread young adult fiction bestsellers. In high school, I hid a flask of vodka that I brought to Lollapalooza in it.
At the foot of my bed was once a toy-box. It held my ever-expanding collection of stuffed pandas, Polly Pockets, and Bratz dolls. Here, my friends and I would dig through to find our persona for the day and roleplay with plastic and rubber. I made my dad move it to the basement a few years ago.
When my parents told me that we would be moving houses by the end of the calendar year, my knee-jerk reaction was to panic. What about my room, my growth chart, my memories, my childhood? Will they be forgotten, replaced by another family, and then another after that?
After spending a month at home between the end of the school year and the start of my summer internship, however, I have realized the metaphoric beauty in this move. In the past three years since starting college, I have grown, changed, metamorphosed in more ways than one.
Where I was once insecure, viewing myself as some failure of a woman, I now treat myself with kindness and love, knowing that imperfection is human. My carefree childhood reminds me of how insecure and self-conscious I was as a teenager by comparison. Now I seek to return to that carefree, self-loving state of mind.
Driving through my hometown and spending time with old friends, I can’t help but feel distanced from my home and from the people I used to be close to. This sometimes sends waves of guilt through me. But these symbols of the past are only reminders of how much I’ve changed and grown since childhood and high school. Perhaps my parents’ decision to move out of our childhood home is the natural next-step, the ending of one chapter and the strides to the next.
By Victoria Wang
Duke Student, resident globe-trotter and founder of getting foreign food posts trending