Empty House
The house suddenly feels so empty. Its just me at home, with my mother lying on the bed, trying to sleep. My girlfriend is in hostel, my brother at his place and my dad in his own home and I don’t think my cousin will be coming back.
I’m kind of irritated with my cousin. He left the house without saying a word of thank you, or goodbye and neither did he tell us what to do with his toiletries, foods etc. There was once, he brought some apples over and put them in the fridge. Im sure his mother told him to bring them to eat, but he left it in there for over 2 months! The apple was all soggy and stinky when I threw it away. But there you have it, wonderful relatives, who come and stay for 2 years in your house, not needing to pay a single cent, not do a drop of housework, uses your computer like its his and leaves without saying a word of thanks and leaves behind a mutant apple in your fridge….again.
But I digress. The house feels empty…. Its not a wonderful house. It’s small. 2 rooms, 1 bathroom and a small balcony. When I first moved back into it 3 years ago, I had to adjust. For 7 years throughout my schooling years, I lived in a relatively comfortable house (double storey terrace) with 4 rooms, 3 baths and of course a little compound outside the house. Moving into a small flat, the issue of space became a big one. In our old house, there was plenty of space for everyones junk. Now, our junk was getting in the way of each other, and tempers flared a lot. Adding to the fact that we had to washing machine, no TV, no phone and internet connection, having to share all the space in a tiny house made things very uncomfortable. But after a period of time, it slowly became home.
Though it is a small house, it is the only place I can call home for now. I never imagined myself coming back to this small house again. When I moved into my fathers house to stay with his wife, things looked rather well for the future. They were both working people, and earned enough for us to be comfortable. We’d go shopping and we pretty much free to buy whatever we fancied, as long as it was reasonable. I didn’t have to worry much about cash, since I was always given enough. But at the end of my secondary school, things started to go downhill.
When I moved into this house, my father divorced his second wife (first was my mom) and went with the third. He didn’t have a job and they were in the food business together. The money was good, but it all went to his wife and her son, and I never so much of that money. My father would ask us to meet him late at night sometimes to pass us cash, but I always hated that for 2 reasons. Firstly, why did we have to sneak around and take money from him like a bunch of.. well.. sneaks… We were his children, and he had every right to support us. Why did we have to be so discreet about a father doing his duty towards his family? Why did all the money go to his wife and her son FIRST? and us, left to scavenge for what is left? Secondly, we never knew how long before he would give us more again. Whenever he passed us some cash, he would say “Spend it wisely.” But was that Rm1000 supposed to last 1 month or 3 months, I hated it because there was no answer.
So, moving into this house not only meant a change in living space, but also a change in our fortunes. Now, three years down the line, we are all still hanging in there. My fathers back with his wife, my brother is working now, my mother is with us and its just left me still studying. Its almost a miracle that we are still surviving. It’s a miracle that somehow we have had enough, though with little extra to live on. It reminds me of that bible story where (im fuzzy on the details) this prophet (or was it Jesus?) went to stay at a poor woman’s house for shelter. The woman complained that she didn’t have enough oil and flour to keep them surviving, but he promised that it will never run out. True enough, their jar of oil and flour never became empty as long as he was there. The lord provided for them literally.
I don’t know what kind of house and what kind of fortune I will be given in the near future. Many times I wish I was as lucky as the people I see around me. Many times I wish I was blessed with good fortune. But even if I am never blessed with the finer things in life, at the least, I wish that I am blessed with the company of the ones that I love most, that i be given the power to help those that matter most to me, to know that my existence has made a difference in their lives. If nothing else, I wish for them to be healthy. One thing I realized very very recently, through the struggles of friends around me, is that for all the material wealth that we posses in life, nothing is more precious and more worth sacrificing for than life itself.
posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 2:06 am
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