For some reason, adults love asking children what their dreams are. And 9 times out of 10, I'm quite certain that the child will answer with some random occupation that they saw in a book that sounds cool. I remember wanting -- no, saying that I wanted -- to be an astronaut and an archaeologist and a chemist (despite my chronic clumsiness) and many other things.
But that's not the kind of dream that I realized has come true.
The other day I was just standing barefoot in my carpeted room, and for some reason my brain was flooded with memories of how I have always wanted a carpeted room.
Yes, that is the dream, that finally after many long years, has come true.
I don't think I've ever really verbalized this dream. It was not like when people asked me, I would say, "my dream is to have my own carpeted room". But I do remember dreaming about it a lot. I guess it's because I've shared a room with my sister for the past 17 years. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing a room with my sister, but there was just a part of me that always wanted a room all to myself. There was a part of me that wanted to be mature enough to be trusted with my own room. And honestly, I can't pinpoint a reason I want it to be carpeted... I guess it's just that sense of coziness(?)
The time I moved into this new room coincides with me starting university, and so in the past few months I have not given my room that much thought. It started out just with blank white walls and absolutely no furniture. But now I have accumulated little interesting bits and bobs here and there, and I guess the place is starting to look lived in.
The decor of the room actually strays quite far from what childhood me envisioned. Childhood me wanted colored walls, fluffy pillows, plants?? You know, all that generic room decor stuff. My room now has none of that, but standing there looking around, I saw so many things that represented what I like, things that childhood me probably didn't even know existed. There's a poster of the universe with an Einstein quote, a little Iron Man head, a Chinese quote that I wrote out, a Day6 poster, a baptism gift, dark purple (my favorite color:D) curtains...
Yeah... I don't know if this sounds weird but it just hit me how much my room was a manifestation of me.
The one thing that aligns with what childhood me wanted is a celestial chart. What's cool is that I think childhood me would only have wanted that chart for its aesthetic factor, but now, though my astronomical knowledge is still extremely rudimentary, I am actually quite impressed with myself at how much of the celestial chart I understand. I think childhood me would have been really proud to know that the different names on the celestial chart meant something to me, that I understand how these stars are formed how they die, how humans have come to develop the instruments that let us understand that, the Greek mythology surrounding the constellations, the controversial social reception of almost all astronomical discoveries...
It was a strange moment because it felt like ... hmm it's hard to describe ... but I guess it almost felt like a glitch occurred in my head, like 6-year-old me sort of time traveled and appeared in my body for a second. Not like my body was taken over by someone else, but more like somehow 6-year-old me was able to communicate with me and I was able to communicate back. (Like in Poem in October by Dylan Thomas).
Okay, I am making this super figurative, but essentially what happened was just my room jogged back some buried memories that I forgot even existed. The subconscious mind is a funny thing.
In a way, despite the difference in details, I feel like I've gotten exactly what I wanted as a child. Right now, the reason I am thankful for this room is not necessarily the fact that I have matured enough to take care of it per se, but the room in and of itself is a physical embodiment of the person I have matured into, and it makes my childhood heart happy to know that.
This is my no means an endpoint, but I am thankful for this random spontaneous moment in which I was reminded to look back.