The first days at the university rushed by like a whirlwind. Crowded hallways, hurried professors, piles of readings that seemed endless. In the middle of it all, I met Evelyn, a talkative classmate who always seemed to have an answer ready on the tip of her tongue. She was the first to strike up a conversation with me, and soon we were sharing tables at the cafeteria and laughing at small things, like the watery coffee they served late in the afternoon.
Even so, when the first weekend arrived, homesickness spoke louder. I took the bus back to my parents' town, my face resting against the window, letting the landscape roll by like a film I had already watched many times.
The house they live in now isn't the same one from when I was little. That one, big and full of light, was left behind along with my father's company. I was too young to hold clear memories of it — I only know what they tell me: wide hallways, expensive furniture, trips kept in photographs.
The house we've lived in since then is smaller, simpler, but it's the one I carry in my heart. It was there I learned to grow up, there I counted expenses with my mother at the kitchen table, there I heard my father say that life could shrink but never stop fitting.
I entered my room with a good kind of ache. The smell was familiar, a mix of wood and old books. What comforted me most, though, were the scribbles.
On the corners of the walls, almost faded, there were pencil drawings: childish strokes, crooked stars, lines that looked like trees, clumsy little houses. They were already there when we moved in, and over time they became a part of me.
How many nights I spent inventing stories about who might have drawn them.
I never knew. But the scribbles were always there, as if keeping a secret.
And somehow, they became the mark of my room, a quiet piece that made me feel less alone.
That night, lying on my bed with its flowery quilt, I thought about how a home isn't made of size or luxury. It's made of memories. And those walls, scratched and imperfect, were part of my story.