That all started with the Big Bang
Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state...
A little while ago, while browsing a completely different site, an ad popped up. It was for a property for sale, and I immediately recognized what it was: a small house in the complex where I lived for seven years. And it brought back to me why, still today, I have never finished watching a TV series I was incredibly passionate about: The Big Bang Theory.
I moved into that house in 2008. New, rented at first (then bought with a mortgage a year later), completely unfurnished. Little money, little time, little desire: minimal furniture. Suffice it to say that when I left it, seven years later, I had only installed two lights in the living room, two plastic IKEA lampshades. In the other rooms, still just bare bulbs hanging from the sockets.
I lived in that house almost entirely alone. In a new place, initially knowing no one. And yet, that house was unforgettable for me. Those were intense years: the internet connection didn't even reach 1 Mbit/sec download, but I had exceptional neighbors who became friends.
In that house, I laughed, cried, rejoiced, licked my wounds. I cooked everything imaginable. I ran network cables at three in the morning, alone, from one floor to another, giving myself lactic acid from climbing the stairs so many times. I lived through a very strong earthquake. I experienced great wellness and terrible sickness, with a 40°C fever and having to get up anyway to cook and buy medicine. My friends/neighbors insisted on helping, but that's just how I am...
In that house, I lived through moments of joy and pain, extreme happiness and heartbreaking sadness. A sense of satisfaction, but also of total failure. Absolute freedom, and loneliness so strong it was frightening.
I packed and unpacked suitcases hundreds of times, leaving and returning at all hours of the day and night. I dreamed, and sometimes, I achieved those dreams. I felt free, totally free. And also caged.
I had to sell it, even though I never wanted to. The pain I felt closing that door for the last time was indescribable. Because only those who have had to, or chosen to, move away from familiar places and people can truly understand what it means. How it feels. That sense of freedom, but also of loneliness. Of being the master of your own life, yet a slave to fate.
I love the house I live in now, let me be clear. I like it, I feel good here, I appreciate it. But that house was part of me - of a phase in my life that was unique, irreplaceable. A phase that will never come back. And which I knew – and in many ways hoped – would eventually end.
I would have kept it; I wouldn't have sold it. But it wasn't possible. I could never have afforded the other house (with its mortgage) without selling that one.
Many years have passed, more than ten, but I still remember every detail. The last evening, similar to so many others spent there, I tried to live it normally. But I knew perfectly well that the next day everything would change. So I watched the episode of The Big Bang Theory I was up to, turned off the television, and went to sleep.
Ready for the changes that would begin the following day.
And I'm still stuck there. I've watched Young Sheldon, but I've never finished The Big Bang Theory. Because, somehow, it's part of that life, of that house. Of that phase.
Sooner or later, probably, I'll get unstuck.
But not today.
Not tonight.
Who knows, maybe tomorrow.
Or the day after.
Or...
That all started with the Big Bang.