Let There be Light (in my House)

A short memoir detailing my experiences with moving, and the houses that came with it.

And let there be light in Drumheller, Alberta. The first time I have the sense to see my house, I am about three years old, and my Mom’s flipping up a switch. I’m in a highchair, fat fist tight around a handful of cheerios. My house is all yellow and white. Look up at the ceiling to see black spots. Call them sprites. There is a box full of toys and a closet I tuck myself in and a bed I tuck myself under when it is too much, a habit that will remain until no particular time at all because it has not stopped. I squeeze behind the shed to draw with Abby with pen, right on the wall. I tell on myself immediately (because I am a ‘good kid’). Gunshot down the road. 9:30 curfew town-wide (7:00 for myself). Little black and white cat sleeping in my bed for Christmas. Abby’s sad older sister plays games with me in the living room, and I smile at her the way I can’t when her Mom’s around because she’s always got an issue with her. One thousand birthdays, all with a pen or pencil. My cat Pan likes in the bathroom, and the kitten (who will be called that forever) likes our other cat Reaper, who does not like her quite as much. I sit with them all on our couch. I do not leave home very much, and when I go for sleepovers, I cry each time. Kids do not come to my house, and I do not want them to. Everything in it is for me to take in. The too-dark basement stairs, and the two bedrooms (we need three, we do, ever since Maddie was born).

We move. There is no time to take it in, and there is no time to think about it, and we move.

Let there be a bit less light in Ear Falls, Ontario. Reel every night with absolute terror for 365 days like an animal put somewhere it was not meant to be; a zoo. Sleep in my parents’ bed every single night, clambering down crying at 11:00pm. This house is not longstanding, but it boxes in my most painful longings. It will, at times, have my best friend in it, the one who sometime after will not return calls, nor messages. There is nothing worse than a house with a ghost. This house is not me. There is no more yellow here, surgical whites and blues and silverfish wriggling beneath the fridge. Strangle myself in the bedroom. Feel like a psych ward patient. Maybe I should have been.

There is another house, three streets down, no more. I cannot measure amounts of light anymore. I get the idea that I can be okay with this, and I am. There are things to ignore, like the scale, and the antiseptic, and the buzzing air, but I ignore them now, I really do. I do it well. These things in this house turn searing hot and then warm. Find myself. Go to the basement for Dungeons & Dragons, and do not think about the people who got me smashing phones down the stairs before the hospital. A room covered in posters, desk drawers stuffed full of secret notes that will dispel the aching, remedy and siphon into something else. Something new. And I nearly die in this house, I do, but being a zombie isn’t nearly as bad as acting like my limbs aren’t about to swell and explode in a magnificent display of disorder. I will take my first pill to get rid of the rot in the living room here.

I will move away, and find myself in limbo.

Let there be light in Winnipeg, Manitoba. God, there will be light.