"Home is So Sad" Adaptation

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“Home is So Sad” by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft 

Of anyone to please, it withers so,

Having no heart to put aside the theft 

And turn again to what it started as,

A joyous shot at how things ought to be,

Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:

Look at the pictures and the cutlery.

The music in the piano stool. That vase. 

“Have you packed more? Almost done?” 

“Yup, but I’m gonna pack some more tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to hang out with Tiff and them.” 

She came downstairs to the living room — perfumed, dressed, makeup on. 

“Going out again? When are you done having this kind of fun?” Her mother said nonchalantly, not looking up from her iPad. All in all, it’s taken a long time for her to get here — hearing that her daughter is venturing out into the dangerous night full of mischievousness and not try to stop her by saying how much of a risk it was to go out on her own at night.

It was eleven in the morning and she had been awake for about an hour. Remote and warm in the pastel yellow duvet blanket, she surveyed her room from corner to corner: pale pink walls, a painting hung on the wall. That jewelry stand. The rays of light through the blinds are reflecting on the adjacent wall. Stuffed toys in the corner that are dusty. That evening, she was leaving home, going abroad, moving out. 

Every time she left home, she felt almost guilty for leaving her mom behind, alone. At the same time, she could never fight the resistance — the bright lights outside, the carefree attitude, the possibilities. Most of the time her mom would barely utter out a “bye” as she stood at the door with keys in hand; even if she did, it was one with an attitude. Behind her the living room stretches out; the room always suddenly looked so large and empty, despite the visible weight of the grand piano behind the sofa her mother often makes herself comfortable on. 

The carpeted stairs, the wooden floor. The window beside the piano, on it place photo frames of her family — mom, brother, and her — from long ago, still and silently. The uneven space between the two opposite couches and the coffee table in the middle. Her brother’s study room’s white energy-saving light contrasting awkwardly from the warm, wooden colours in the living room. 

Sitting in between her two big suitcases, she looked childish. Her face expressing complex sadness. Her mother observed her, “you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.” That was the first time her mother had tried to make her stay with words. “I know.” But she wanted to leave. 

Home is so sad, but why is leaving home sadder? Knowing that everything will stay the same is not enough anymore; the other half of her is pulling her away from this house. This house, so homey, picturesque; so meant for a family. 

What I Stopped Doing

What I stopped doing:

Writing sentimental cards or letters 

Being sentimental

Talking on the phone every night 

Heart wrench upon hearing certain names 

Receiving or writing emails to my dad 

Creating happiness for my mom

Posting pictures on Facebook

Trying as hard to hold up a conversation

I used to feel so much when I was younger, as a child, as a teenager...

I am not certain whether it’s a form of desensitization or not, because I don’t think desensitization is all it is, but this excerpt from the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close seems to capture how I feel about sentimentality slipping away from me year after year just enough: 

“Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did.

I spent my life learning to feel less. 

Every day I felt less. 

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 

It is so sad. What are we capable of doing that we do not know? This is one of them. Autonomic adaptation to life.

Everything was always so easily hilarious and moving and heartbreaking and unusually miraculous or devastating, but everything seems to become less of everything as the years add up. I used to cry whenever we had the moment of silence in memory of those who passed away from 9/11 in elementary and even high school. Now I can’t even cry if I want to. But sometimes, like reading stories about the little boy who was waiting for his dad at the finish line of the marathon got blown to pieces from the Boston bombing, tears just burst out of me two days after reading about it when someone asked me if I were okay. 

It is so deep. Writing sentimental and cringingly cheesy birthday or thank-you cards was my priority and strength in every occasion worth celebrating. I’ve always been a thinker. Everyone was always like, “you think too much.” Then I think I’ve thought less, not voluntarily, it just happened. Not that I’m not a thinker anymore, but I guess eventually I lost track of where the lost thoughts go and what it all means—to others, to myself, and to anything else—so, I jumped on the bandwagon of “don’t think too much about it”. 

Another birthday is approaching. Having less heart-wrenching and passionate emotions, genuinely cannot care more than what I can emotionally and financially afford, and having less energy and motivation to put, not even glue, the broken pieces together—is this growing older? Is this what is coming out of it? 

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live” 

Having just been to my younger brother’s high school graduation and revisiting students’ speech that always repeat every year one way or another, with lines like “ready to take on this crazy thing called ‘life’,” or “life is a game, you just need to know how to play it.” All the while, I was having briefly argumentative and almost condescending thoughts like “no!” and “it’s not true, it’s a trap!”. What it’s like to be naive and hopeful at the same time. 

At the moment, it feels like life is lifting up its veil bit by bit, and I’m hoping there is an end to this lessening of my self and that, there is much more to heartbreaking words put together in books that make me cry and struggling eternally out of an emotional hole. 

What I started doing:

Saving (more than just money) 

Not be too caught up in moods, they really are overrated 

Feeling less sad about sad things

Learning

Accepting changes

Making the first step (e.g. get out of bed, begin typing up an outline, send/reply an email etc.) 

Taking a life to learn how to live would be a waste of a life. No one knows how to live, but we just do, but I guess that is only existing. I don’t want to just exist for a life and learn how to live by the end of it, so I will try harder.