You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.

- Garden State


My former seatmate posted this quote on her blog. I admit, I've been feeling like this quote myself.

In three hours, I will be twenty-five. I have lived in my house for something close to 17 of those years. I live in a society where families stick together no matter what, no matter how long, and it's perfectly cool that I still look out for my parents, most especially since I'm the eldest, and just simply have to.

But already I feel how more and more this house is some place I no longer call "home". My room upstairs that I share with my brother feels less and less the comforting refuge I remember back in the day. I cannot sleep there anymore, the same way you probably cannot just sleep in strange people's homes. I find that as I have grown up over the years, I am asked more responsibilities, but have only the same privileges, and they are also slowly being reduced. I cannot pick the room I want, the downstairs den, because it's not my decision to make, and I get the feeling it will never be my decision to make.

It's the same white walls with the same barking dogs and the same rotten rock music my family plays. It's the same routine of the same mornings with the sameness that feels more and more foreign and alien, not because it's changed, but because I've changed, and that my heart longs to pick its own walls, its own pets, choose its own choices of furniture and make it own mess. I long to make my own way, to get away where nobody demands me to save them. I long to make my own mistakes.

I feel it. I want out. I need to find a way away, to fly away and never be found.