Little Nostalgia: My Memory Gallery

Exhibit 1: The First Night Alone

I was 18 years old when I moved out and away from my home for my studies.

We had been looking for colleges for a few months and it took me a while to decide what I wanted to study (having very recently given up on the dream of becoming a doctor that I had been holding on to since third grade - by choice; a story for another time I suppose).

But once it was all decided, all it took was a week for me to pack up and leave and move to a completely different and stranger city.

I had never lived alone until that point, I had barely ever been away anywhere without my Mum always in tow.

When everything was settled, we had a family dinner in a restaurant, sort of like a night out of celebration, before my parents left me back in my hostel and told me they'd visit me tomorrow.

To tell you the truth, I didn't expect them to leave me there that night. I didn't even know we had returned to the hostel to leave me until they told me that they're leaving and I was supposed to stay back for the night.

They were going stay for a couple of more days at my Aunt's place and I had just assumed I'd stay with them for as long as they were there. But I guess they were trying to see if I could stay by myself without them, if I could do this.

Nobody really knew what to expect even though we had already made all the big decisions of enrolling into the school and paying for tution and hostel. Not to mention all the travel and packing and moving and the amount of shopping we had done for this move.

I didn't know what to expect either.

So they left me and I watched them until their retreating backs had disappeared out of my view too. And then I lingered by the door, almost as if I expected them to come back and tell me it was a joke and that they were taking me with them. Of course that didn't happen.

I was just stalling and trying to pass the time because I didn't want to go into my room just yet. I knew the reality of the situation would hit hard once I was in my room. A room that was mine but not quite so. I suddenly craved company of people.

The first night that I was in my hostel room alone in a completely different city and place and with only strangers around, the lightning outside struck hard.

That's what I remember of that night the most.

The sound of the lightning was so loud that it felt like tons of heavy metal pieces were being thrown out of the sky and hitting the ground, each one louder than the one before. It almost felt like a storm was on the way.

If I'm being completely honest, as brave as I had been in front of my family during the whole move, I was actually very scared. So much that I didn't even want to show it to anyone, worried that the second they see the fear I was feeling, they'll immediately take me back to home. So I stayed calm and smiled and nodded throughout.

But on the inside, I was anything but calm. I didn't know if I was going to survive it. I had always been very shy, very hesitant about speaking up. I had always had trouble making friends, it never came to me easy. I always got nervous while talking to the new people, half the times swallowing my own words. Up until that point, I hadn't even gone shopping for my own clothes by myself.

I didn't know if I could do any of these things that I had never done before. I didn't know if I had it in me to be this person I hadn't been before.

But that first night alone, there was no storm. It was just lightning during a rainy season.

And just like that scary lightning, I survived the night too. And then many that followed after it.