goodbye chandeliers..

on living alone and leaving it behind.

leaving it behind sounds like a dramatic break-up. we aren’t breaking up, just taking a period of separation. of six weeks moving back home with my parents followed by months and months of travel. but on the other side? I’ll leave that open to the year’s experience and where it leaves me ( and the state of the rental market by then).

three years I lived in my large, light-filled two bedroom unit. the space felt decadent for one person and yet the bathroom felt more disposed for that inclination. an awkward folding door was the only barrier from the bathroom and toilet to the rest of the house. living alone I had minimal use for it and loved showering with the door open. I have lived out of home ever since I was freshly eighteen, moving from the home in the country to the big city for uni. having now lived in Adelaide an equal number of years it feels comical to think of that big city as anything more than a large, sprawling town. I love Adelaide with my whole heart but a bustling city it is not. in those long years I’ve lived in no less than six share sharehouses with between one and three housemates, plus the inevitable partners and for a number of years with the addition of a child a week on and off. some housemates have been great, some memorable, some brief, never to be in contact again. when my most recent (and easily one of the best) housemate was ready to move in with her partner I decided it was time to live solo. a notion I had previously avoided as I firmly believed I would revel in it too much and never wish to cohabitate again. it felt like an ending of something.

I loved my new, completely solo space. the beautiful but heavily dented, scratched and stained wooden floorboards, the creaks they made as I thumped around barefoot. the so ugly it is cool retro kitchen all amber glass, wood and shiny oven splash back. I mean it had its down sides in the initially hidden but hideous contacted interiors of the cupboards and the atrociously dirty old oven but I loved the old homey feel that came with these lived in features. I soaked in the mess of an overgrown garden that camouflaged my windows, meaning I would basically never close the blinds, the foliage that created the gorgeous and ever changing light and shadows that played across the walls each morning. I revelled in the fact that one of my favourite cafes was at the end of my street, creating such a good relationship with one of the baristas that we hugged on my reluctant last visit. when they opened as a wine bar at night, I would use any excuse to have friends meet me there, selfishly a five minute walk home for me. I loved those dark, evening walks home, taking them as slow as one can make an eight hundred metre walk. one memorable walk home was as a storm started to roll in. a hot night, fat drops of rain and cool bursts of wind bringing relief. the sky starting to light up with distant lightning in the otherwise silent streets.

the opposite end of my street ran smack bang into the South Australian Arnott’s factory. walking the street of an evening would be accompanied by the saccharine smell of biscuits. scotch fingers, tick tocks, shortbread creams. I could never escape thoughts of sugary treats and yet, not once did the smell ever feel off-putting or cloying. it became a signal for home. for breathing a deep sigh of relief, shucking off the day and escaping into my own space. I loved, revelled in it, settled deep into it. initially I invited friends over and dreamed of all the future dinner parties and entertaining I would do. instead I found the longer I lived there the less I wanted to bring people into my home, instead opting for dinners out. it became a space of solace but never loneliness. I took to it and doubled down on it. I isolated twice in with Covid. the first time only becoming restless because I was not allowed to leave the space at all, so strict were the rules back then. the second isolation I was allowed to come and go as I please (while avoiding contact with people) and I solo hiked the week away, read a novella an afternoon for three days, sipped wine in the dying afternoon light. come the end of the week I was regretful at the prospect of having to reenter the world.

when I decided to take such a long chunk of leave this year it made the most sense to pack up, leave behind my space of solace and freedom in search of a different kind of liberation and solitude. the feeling of selling most of my furniture, of downsizing my belongings was one of the most exquisite feelings of lightness. after so many years of share houses and moving around, my belongings were a constellation of white Ikea furniture, cheap kitchenware from Kmart and random accumulations that I’m not sure who owned them originally. to let all of that go felt right. my last year alone had me feeling restless, chafing at the boundaries I had created for myself and so now I have given up my one comfort space, my ability to hide myself away in a space that no one else has access to. in that change, I have gained space to explore and test my own limits at adjusting to liminal spaces at the mercy of others and I’m curious to see how it fits.

the last night I spent in my near empty space was how I spent many of my evenings across those three years, and a fitting end from my perspective. I drank several glasses of Prosecco (Alpha Box & Dice Tarot - excellent for the price point), ordered in my favourite Pad Thai and watched Little Women (2017 mini series, another decent adaptation). clearly leaning in to the comfort of the familiarity of favourite wine/food/stories with nothing left but my television on the floor, an old pink corduroy bean bag and my bed. goodbye to the well-paced track to the toilet during the night, so well travelled I could do it with barely opening my eyes and not crashing into a thing. goodbye to the intricate shadows the screen door made on my wall in the late afternoon. goodbye to walking around nude whenever I felt like it. goodbye to the place I stubbornly put together myself, building from a flatpack my new queen sized bed and mattress all on my own. a physical labour and later hazard when I sliced my inner arm open breaking the box down with a Stanley knife and swiftly learning to problem solve my bleeding arm myself by driving to my doctor’s surgery to get stitches. goodbye to the ability to drink a bottle of wine and eat hot chips for dinner and no one will know. or maybe just goodbye for now.