Well, not quite.
Naturally, he threw himself into the fresher cliché of going
out to a club on the very first night. Making the most of his new-found
independence, he didn’t think twice about the consequences of rolling back into
‘home’ at five in the morning. Instead of finding scolding parents when he did,
he found a retching flatmate by the toilet.
The next few weeks went by, a blur dominated by bouts of
Freshers’ Flu and trying to hear lecturers over obscene amounts of coughing. He was still enjoying his new-found independence:
he could eat when he wanted; go out when he wanted; eat and drink what he
wanted (so long as they were within his cataclysmically small budget).
Before you know it, it’s Christmas. Dave drags an impossibly
big case onto the train and goes ‘home’. Weeks of comparatively luxurious food,
affection and relaxation: recuperation. Here, he did not get to do what he
wanted, but he got everything done for him again. This was also a time spent
arguing with his parents and brother about what to watch on television, what to
eat in the evening, when to go out to town, not to wind his brother up, how, contrary
to popular belief, the incongruous piles of paper scattered across the lounge
in fact represent order and not chaos.
He had to get used to
living with others again. He did that at University, of course, but his ‘university-home’
had his own private space. It felt like a step back to a time of imposed rules
and not eating pasta at every meal-time. ‘My roof my rules’ comes into play;
something that one gets used to forgetting when one has been sharing a roof
with 400 others.
At University, Dave was
truly Dave. He forgot the rules and curfews of home-home, and fell into the questionable
customs–characterised by eccentricity, a lack of cleanliness, and beans–of university-home.
After these months of developing Dave’s way of life, he is jarringly
jolted back into the routine of home-home. As soon as he gets used to living
with his family again, he is thrown back into the relative chaos of
university-home, and the routine continues, having to readapt so much that he
almost competes with the chameleon.
After several cycles of readjustment, a change in his
philosophy takes place, and he is trapped in a state of limbo. Although he
talks to the ‘guy next door’ of ‘moving home tomorrow for Easter’, ‘home’
becomes a strained word. There is something missing from the university-home to
be able to call it home. Equally, when he’s home, his mother constantly
corrects him when he refers to university-home as ‘home’. Of course, home-home
is a place of priceless parental affection and much-needed cooked meals, but there
comes a time when he can’t wait to get back to University, just like there’s a
time when he’s ‘ready to go home.’ The boxes containing the ‘stuff’ of his life
are split equally amongst the two places competing to hold the place of ‘home’
in his heart, but neither university-home nor home-home is ‘home’ in the sense
that he once knew it.
Very true. You summed that up quite well.
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