Describe THE MOMENT When You Left Home For The First Time

[Cruel_Sandwich]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 8:36pm

Where were you? Who took you there?

My mom, sister, and grandmother dropped me off at college two years ago and it was, by far, one of the hardest things I've ever done. We ate dinner trying to ignore what was inevitable.

Then they dropped me off at the college. I walked off thinking "Don't want to look at the car." Then I turned around because "I want to savor this moment."

And that is when I left home.

[nitsua]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 8:38pm

Freedom was the only thing I felt. I've never looked back.

I left for college and they didn't even help me load my car, much less help me move 30 minutes away.

Updated On: 1/9/08 at 08:38 PM

[Jane2]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 8:43pm

Hey! interesting topic, CS!

All I remember is that I was angry with my parents, and to get back at them, I decided to leave home. I think I just went outside and hid somewhere. After a while, I realized they weren't coming for me, so I went back inside.

Posted: 1/9/08 at 8:46pm

I did that once, Jane. I went all the way to the end of my driveway, my Barbie sleeping bag stuffed with stuff that would never help a runaway child, and then got scared and turned back.


The first time I really left home was for a two week exchange trip to Germany in the fifth grade. I look back with a lot of regret at how I spent my time there: crying. I wish I could do it all over again, only now, so that I could appreciate it.

[Jane2]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 8:52pm

OH BOY! OY VEY! I read the title of this thread and what registered with me was "the first time I ran away from home!"

I guess the first time I left home was my first summer at sleepaway camp, when I was about 12.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 9:00pm

Well, I went to college locally and moved into apartments withing 10 minutes of my parents over the years. I took a job travelling, but I would be gone for a month and home for a few weeks. My parents bought a bigger house and I moved back in. So, when I actually left home was two years ago when I moved here. My parents wouldn't help me. They didn't pick up the first box, but I did't ask them to. I loaded it all in my little U-Haul and told them I was going. My mom started crying instantly. My dad could barely look at me. It was the hardest thing ever. I get home twice a year now and leaving is always difficult.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 9:20pm

I jumped for joy and cried for hours because I was finally free.

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 9:24pm

I packed up half my stuff in my friend's car and moved to an apartment thirty minutes away in Minneapolis that my parents only came to once in the whole time I lived there (they brought me a bunch of boxes of ramen noodles when I asked them to help me out with food for the month). Leaving home left me full of joy.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 9:29pm

I guess the first time I left home was my first summer at sleepaway camp, when I was about 12.

I count this too. It was the first time I was away from my home AND family for that long. But I think I was 11.

Also, it was a crappy camp.

I guess my moving out story is different because I never felt stifled or overprotected by my parents. I feel different kinds of freedom when I'm there and at my apartment. (I'm usually at my parents' house at least once a month because there's always a family function or my parents are traveling, so I housesit -- they're only about half an hour away.)

Updated On: 1/9/08 at 09:29 PM

[DG]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 9:38pm

My step-father spent my childhood trying to 'beat the gay out of me'. As it approached the time for me to leave for college (which he had nothing to do with,) he decided it would be better if I were dead than gay and out in the world - so he tried to throw me through a sliding glass door. I managed to get away from him after I glanced off the door's frame, and ran from the house with my mother, brother and sister screaming after me.

I had nothing with me but the clothes on my back, and I never set foot in the house again.

Anything else you want to know?

[D2]

Posted: 1/9/08 at 9:47pm

Had a fight with Mother D2, called a broker in Forest Hills, saw a couple of apartments and signed a lease that afternoon. My parents helped me pack and move, and they sold the house the next day.

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 12:00am

DG, unless your father is dead, you should stage a reconciliation and then beat the crap out of his old ass. If he is dead and you are much distraught about that well, imagine I said something more sensitive.

Updated On: 1/10/08 at 12:00 AM

[DG]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 12:02am

Ronin - he is still alive, but we haven't spoken for many years. He is severely diabetic, and I understand they've had to start removing parts of his body. I thought that was enough.

Besides, I simply couldn't stomach seeing him ever again.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 12:51am

The time I left my PARENTS house was when I went to college. My parents dropped me off and my mom walked me to my dorm room and cried when she said goodbye and I went into my room and balled for like 3 hours. I was happy to be away from them but scared to death to be on my own for the first time.

The other "home" is a completely different story.

Updated On: 1/10/08 at 12:51 AM

[SNAFU]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 1:54am

I left home at 17 hitchhiking from Poughkeepsie to Northport LI to finish High School. I had found a job and a place to live. My abusive Step Dad had moved us the beginning of my senior year of HS. I told them either I return and finished with the people I had gone to school with my entire life or I quit.
Dear Old Step Dad (who is now departed) was happy to see me go! I had all my possessions in a single suitcase. I even got picked up by some undercover narcs on my journey! I never looked back!

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 1:55am

Wow. I am proud of you guys that left such an abusive (physical and mental) home life and bettered yourselves. *HUGS TO ALL OF YOU*

[DG]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 1:58am

SNAFU - my brother!

I never got the whole 'evil step-mother' thing - but don't get me started on the step-father part

[DayDreamer]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 3:16am

When I went to Europe when I was 19. I have never been away from my parents - I was a total momma's boy and everyone thought I would not last a week. Hell ... I could barely survive a weekend away from mom before that. But had a fantastic time, never really "missed" home, and when I went back, I was there for only a few months before I moved away for good.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 3:43am

DG me too. I had to wear long pants all summer long to hide the welts while growing up. Dear old Bill liked to use belts, garden tools and knife sharpening stones on us. I was threatened that if I ever told my real father I would never be allowed to see him again! Ah and they wonder why I drank!
Once I left home I knew I was never going back. All I have accomplished in my life (which some will say is a lot) I did despite my childhood.

[dramaparoxysm23]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 4:00am

I'm leaving for college on Saturday. I'll let you know then.

[LadyRosecoe]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 4:14am

When I was 15 I spent 3 weeks in Florida with my aunt and uncle and loved it, I didn't miss home. I went the following summer and stayed for a month that time.

College has been the real deal, spending months away with only the impersonal phone contact. It's hard, but you adjust and deal and grow in your experiences and I've appreciated this process as being one of the most important I may ever know.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 9:06am

It was, and is to this day, the worst day of my life.

Backstory: I was raised in the same town in Kansas, all the way from Kindergarten through college. So I didn't have the "going off to college" experience as other do. I perceive that as an interim bridge between youth and adulthood. But for me, college felt more like "extended high school" in a really huge place. I lived at home and attended the university on scholarship. I did go away to do summer stock, and that was the longest I'd ever been away alone before. Three months in Michigan doing theatre, between my junior and senior years, and then following my senior year. So, I'd had a taste of living on my own, but it still didn't prepare me for the "final" day I left.

It was during my second season of stock that I found out my parents were divorcing, and the house that I had grown up in since the age of five was going to be sold. Things began to move very quickly as soon as the season ended, I returned home, and found that our house had already sold. That's when I decided I would move to New York, right then. Initially, I thought I'd work through part of the fall to earn some extra cash before attempting to survive the Big Apple, but now, without a home to stay in, I'd have to get an apartment locally and support myself, while trying to save a little money, and it seemed like the best thing to do was make the "big move" to NY instead. Otherwise, I was fearing I'd never get out of Kansas.

Fortunately, I had many friends from summer stock then who were either living in, or moving to, New York---so plans fell into place right away with roommates and a Manhattan apartment, etc.

The day I left for New York, was also the day my father had to "legally" be out of the house for good. I planned it that way on purpose, but perhaps that was a mistake. It was "too much change" all at once, in hindsight. But I didn't want to live there one day without my dad. The divorce was very amicable and civilized. No drama. But still, it was a divorce. And it was the end of everything I had known as "home" since the age of five.

So, as my friend Stephanie came to pick me up to take me to the airport, I looked back at my parents standing in the driveway. I was too numb to cry, but I wanted to. It was devastating to me. My mom waved at me from the front porch, and my dad waved at me from the bottom of the front stairs... and I knew that I would never see any of this again. My house was gone. I would never see my mother and father together again. I would never "be home for Christmas," or for a visit.

It was gone.

And I was right. It's been 22 years now since that overwhelming day, and I'm sad to report that I was right. My parents have never laid eyes on each other since that day. I have never seen them together since then. They live in two different states now. I have never seen the bedroom from my "youth" again. And I never will.

I moved to New York with such an empty feeling. Everything that I had known in the past had vanished abruptly and completely. There was no going "home," even for a short visit. Sure, I could go back to Kansas or to see Mom in California, and visit my parents in their new, individual places... but I could never go "back" again.

Perhaps that's why I have such a romanticized view of the past. Of my past. It was a good childhood, with two loving supportive parents and a terrific "foundation" to build upon... and I think it might have made that "moving day" all the more painful because of it.

I was saying a permanent goodbye to everything from my childhood, for the last time.

I've had rough days since then, in the past 22 years. Adulthood can knock you around a bit, as I'm sure many of you can attest.

But nothing... NOTHING remotely compares to that day.

(Jesus, that was even painful to write about it.)

Updated On: 1/10/08 at 09:06 AM

[RetroBoy]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 9:13am

Well, it was pretty exciting for me. I was 19 years old, a year out of high school trying to find my niche in the world. I had decided not to go straight to college. That year I fell in love with the love of my life. We started dating the first six months and then he asked me to move in with him. I said yes. I went home and told Mom and Dad and they were happy for me. I packed up my belongings and moved in to my boyfriend's apartment on the Upper West Side.

It was great.

[singingbackup]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:14am

23 years old, moving to Southern California. I packed everything I owned into the back of my canary yellow Plymouth Volare. After a tearful goodbye to my mother, my estranged father (he moved out when I was 15) hugged me awkwardly, gave me some money and 2 VHS tapes (Caligula and Taboo IV), both 'adult videos,' don't ask me why.

I had a pit stop to make to give my then ex boyfriend my tap shoes--he was in a production of George M--and then made my way to the PA Turnpike. Driving up the on ramp, Kenny Loggins "This is It" was playing on "WIFI 92", for real. Very appropriate...I cranked it up and headed West.

[DG]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:31am

Besty - thanks for taking the time to share all that. It's virtually impossible for me to wrap my head around actually WANTING to remember the past, but you made that feeling come alive.