For my first blog post, I'd like to list and talk about every place I lived in.
I started living in an apartment in a city always filled with construction work. I shared a bedroom with my little brother, and we had a balcony where he locked me out once. The living room had the parents's bed, and there was a big wooden mezzanine bed above. It had no mattress, since it housed my playmobil construction to protect them from my little brother's destructions. I recall my favorite one at that time being a zoo, with modular fencing. We had a dog named Nala (like in the Lion King, who was a hunting dog breed but also the sweetest ever. She killed a hen once, but that was because she wanted to play and the hen was so scared she died by herself. We also had a cat, Boulette (meatball), who loved to sleep in the Christmas crêche. She would climb in the middle of it so carefully to lay down, she never disturbed any of the santons. I always liked santons, I recall getting to make my own when I was a child when we visited a workshop with my primary school. We lived in a fairly big building, I recall being friend with the neighbor's daughter and often sleeping there. She had a TV in her bedroom, and one night we secretly stayed up late to watch the channel Teletoons. We were met with a sort of glitch making an episode cut in the middle and play on loop, which really creeped us out. I recall another neighbor living on the floor above ours. She had absolutely massive and tall cactus that fascinated me, and I think beads curtains. I'd love to have bead curtains where I live someday.
The second place where I lived was an old house in a small town. There was no tall building there, only houses. We had a small garden of gravels surrounded by very tall walls separating it from the neighbors. There was a barbecue built in a wall, and we also had our own very old stone "lavoir". There was a hole in the bottom of it, where the people living there previoustly had left a cat, who gave birth to other cats, who gave birth to one cat I still have to this day, Noisette (hazelnut). I shared a bedroom with my little brother again at first, until I grew old enough to get my own bedroom for my own privacy, putting the two brothers in the same bedroom instead. The stairs were wooden and pretty dangerous somehow, all of us fell at least once down them, and one broke a toe in it too. No room was truly square, and they weren't all flat either, I recall seeing pens roll down when I set them down. We had a cellar, but I never went there, it was really huge and dark and I was too scared of spiders. An entire pillar of the house was very moldy, and once we got an infestation of bugs in the garage we split to partially use as a dining room since the kitchen was too small to fit all of us. I really loved that town, I could walk to the school bus by myself, go to the store to buy snacks with the pocket money I got at the time by myself, the bakery had the best baguettes I ever ate to this day and would always make huge birthday cakes. Even the butcher had cheap and delicious meat, and the weekly street market was also cheap and nice. I bought clothes here that I either still wear, or passed on to my sister, since they are of such nice quality. What I loved about this house was all the cicadas and olives decors and wall tiles that I was always enamored with.
With my father, I lived on a terrain that belonged to a friend of him who let him use his vacations trailers as housing. The first one was small and cozy, and since it only had one bed, we took turn visiting him. We would watch movies very late, I recall falling asleep numerous times watching the lord of the rings and eating cereals as dinner. However the bathroom was in a separate tiny wooden building, and the guard dog was let out at night, which truly give me a scare, with how it raced after me and barked.
He eventually moved to a bigger trailer on the same terrain where us three kids of him could be at the same time. There was three beds, so my brother slept with him. We had a fridge given by the neighbor since it was so extremely hot every food that could melt was melting. The metal trailer was right under the sun all day long. We met the neighbor and would use his shower too. My father was helping him renovate his house and dig and build a ground swimming pool. I befriended his daughter, who bore the nickname my father used to give me as a name. They had a TV nearly the size of the whole wall, a huge american fridge, a big italian shower, and the floor was renovated to be made of heatable tiles. There was a huge apple orchard us kids would steal apples from, and a massive weeping willow we claimed as our base. Since then, they are ones of my favorite trees, with the mimosa and cherry trees.
He later lived in an actual apartment in another town. Once, my sister was so bored she drew all over the walls. The fridge was rarely filled with actual food, and he played music very late, as a bassist. We didn't have chairs but benches, for some reason. We often watched American Dad on the TV at lunch, which we were definitely too young to watch at all. This place does not hold nice memories.
He then lived with a dog and cat breeder. She abused her guard dogs one after the other with electrical collars. Once, I got to feed the baby puppies with the food syringes. One puppy loved me and would always walk up to me so I would pick her up and show her how it felt to be as tall as me (not very tall!). She was eventually sold, sadly. We ate countless frozen pizzas and burgers as the adults were often gone, so the two of us older kids took care of heating them up for my brother, their brother, and my sister. The downstairs toilets were situated so people had to go through our bedroom I shared with them, so buyers sometimes barged in to go use the bathroom randomly. We went out by the window a couple of times so we could go to the big river without bringing the younger ones with us. They had hens to have eggs, but the guard dog sometimes killed them since he was so agressive. It did not feel very nice to be in that house. There was also a big very exposing nude protrait to the mother we had to face when we wanted to watch movies on the TV upstairs in her bedroom, which she watched with us.
My mother met someone else, who made us leave for the countryside. The house was the biggest I ever lived in, but it was also extremely isolated, and we sometimes had power or water cut, as well as a really bad internet. I got to choose the colors of my walls and had picked two white and two turquoise, which was my favorite color at the time. Once, it was filled to the ceiling with flies, every wall covered and crawling all over, since we lived next to huge cow fields. Once, one died and she was left to decompose for a week, we passed by it every day. The puppy slept by one of the unusable fireplace, bringing his towel in his mouth to cover where he slept like he made his bed every time. One part of the garden was down and covered in big flat stones that I liked. The other part was much bigger but covered in extremely tall grass, so we never went there. This was were I secretely started staying up at night on skype, on my school laptop.
My father moved again. I shared a room with the same kid still. The apartment was small, and very yellow all over. I think we ate at the restaurant all the time, either by taking food from it in secret, or by eating leftovers from the day. I tried swordfish once. We both had to work at the restaurant and hotel where my father and their mother worked at too. The boss was fine with it and was angry when we weren't working, even if we were unpaid and children. We still had a bathroom next to our bedroom, but this time it was our own. At that time, I stimmed a lot by swinging my arms back and forth, which resulted in my fingers being caught in a fan. They were taking a bath while I was cleaning up my blood in the sink, thankfully it did not infect even if we only had water to treat the cuts. The room was extremely hot since we were above a machine room, so we would bring buckets to the restaurant and fill them with the ice machine to keep water bottles cool for longer in our bedroom. Their mother would let older men and probably even adults, one once bringing them a little puppy they took care of. There was an artificial lake next to the restaurant where my little brother and sister spent most of the days, I was not allowed to go with them. We would stay up very late in the night, always orally playing made up characters to entertain ourselves. We could only go to sleep once the characters were going to bed too. This was when I had started tearing off my hair. The hotel had a cute stray grey cat roaming around.
Boarding school was too hard on me, so my mother moved to a village in another house for my sake. I spent days on my mattress watching ghost hunting videos from GussDX after we moved, my spine would go back in place each night when I laid back down. The house was often moldy, we had a very big garden of grass that always grew way too tall. My bedroom was always a total mess at that period of time. for some reason, the shower head shrieked in suffering every time we used the hot water. I finally got my hair cut short, relieved because I couldn't tear them out anymore this way. We welcomed dogs and cats in wait to be adopted. I do not remember much of this time and all the memories are through a obscuring filter. I never visited my father again.
I moved out on my own, to a student room. It's the smallest you can legally rent. It feels like mine and also not at the same time, there is no kitchen so I made my own, and I cannot move the furniture. It's my last year here. The colored tiles are placed randomly with no pattern, and the water stains everything yellow or white. I do like to watch my computer while sitting on my bed, and to listen to the cicadas cries in summer. The wall is covered in prints I accumulated, most from Heart of Gold's creators. I spend most of my days locked in there, the blinds shut.
My mom moved again. I know that once my studies end, I won't be homeless as I seek work and try to get a job and money for a rent. It's a smaller house, but I feel comfortable in it, it's all white and dark red. I only feel bad for the animals who now have a small garden to hang out in, but it's still big enough to be nice for them. The cats love to go out at night to feel less hot and sleep in the garden chairs. I feel safe there.