11 thoughts you have while sleeping in your childhood bedroom when you’re home for the holidays

The holidays are here! ‘Tis the season of awkward office parties where someone (maybe you, definitely me) has a little too much eggnog and tries to do a sexy rendition of “Santa Baby.” Friendships are strengthened and tested during intense rounds of White Elephant, and you have the opportunity to explain to your family — once again — why you’re single/unwed/not pregnant (“No, I’m not ‘made of tumbleweeds from the waist down,’ Aunt Cora, but thank you for your concern.”)

Like flightless Canadian geese riddled with student loan debt, many of us will travel home this winter, where we’ll sleep once again in the same rooms we grew up in.

It’s weird, being back in your childhood room. It brings up a lot of stuff. Here are some of the thoughts that can cross your mind.

1. Aaaah, nothing like being back in my old room. Okay so, Mom decided to set up a TV and an elliptical in here but whatever — it’s fine. Really, it’s fine. I’m fine.

2. Like, it’s seriously fine — but I only moved out seven years ago and it just feels like they’re not really respecting *my* space, you know? Whatever, it’s fine.

3. Look at all of these old pictures! Yikes — so much eyeliner. Between that and all the striped shirts, I always looked like some sort of half-transformed were-racoon. I still don’t know how Avril made that look work.

4. Ooooh look at this picture of Mark Tucker from 9th grade biology class, what a smokeshow. Those frosted tips were on point. Literally — they were very, very pointy. I wonder if he’s single…

5. Mark is married. Love is dead. 

6. Everyone has found love except me. I’m going to the kitchen to find some some leftovers to dull the pain of Mark’s betrayal.

7. Omg, please please please don’t let that be the sound of my parents having sex.  I know I should be modern and happy for their continued passion or whatever, but ugh ugh please no. (And frankly, I resent the idea that they’re getting more action than I am.)

8. Pretty sure they were just shifting in their sleep, so I guess I don’t have to light my hair on fire tonight. I’ve managed to make it back my bedroom/the home gym with one arm full of Tupperware containers, and one arm full of my parents’ cat. He loves me, even though he doesn’t act like it.

9. So full, but so worth it. Food somehow tastes better at home. It’s like I can taste the fact that I don’t have to pay rent here.

10. Seriously though, I love my dinky twin bed, and the stupid cat, and how mom always worries about whether I’m warm enough, and how dad curses when he puts up decorations. I love laying here and thinking about how things have changed over the years and how they haven’t, and how even when I feel completely lost and like I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, I can come here and feel grounded and safe.

11. Oooh Trey Francis from 11th grade English…

I wonder if he’s single…