Elizabeth Day The healing power of living alone - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Life Elizabeth Day The healing power of living alone By You Magazine - September 29, 2019 I have two recurring stress dreams. One is about sitting my history A-level and realising just before the exam that I misread the timetable at the beginning of term and have missed all the relevant lessons. The other is about having to pack up a room filled with so much paraphernalia that I have no way of doing it in the allotted time. Never let it be said that I don’t dream big. Jenny Brough Anyway, I believe the first of these dreams is a pretty standard anxiety response. But it’s the second I’ve been thinking about lately, as I prepare to move house. For years I identified myself as a creature of habit. In my late 20s, I had a strong nesting instinct and longed to build a home for the family that I believed would inevitably follow. I got married. We moved into a terraced house in a sensible part of London, surrounded by buggies and coffee shops and soft play areas. But the family never happened. I tried and failed to have children. The soft play areas started to make me sad when I walked past them. The coffee shops were too noisy to work in because all the antenatal groups went there. My marriage ended. When I left, I also left my home and any shared possessions. I walked out with two bags of clothes. For a year, I lived in other people’s houses – either with generous friends or in Airbnbs booked for stints abroad. I was liberated by the discovery that I did not, after all, need the attachment of physical objects. In fact, I found that I could make myself feel at home almost anywhere, as long as I had my laptop to write, my phone to call my friends and a dressing gown (this latter item, I have learned, is absolutely essential). After 12 months of a nomadic existence, I rented a flat. I moved to a different part of London, one I’d never properly explored before and which came with no sad memories. The flat was small and filled with light. There was a bay window where I put my desk. As I typed out columns and novels, I watched neighbourhood cats gambol along the pavement. I thought that this flat would be another transitional space. I kept all my suitcases stacked on top of the cupboards, within easy reach. ‘I won’t be here for long,’ I thought. ‘The next phase of my life will start soon.’ But my flat became its own phase. I put up pictures where I wanted, without having to accommodate another person’s taste. I filled the shelves with books and mementos. I have now been here for three years. My flat has been an extraordinary refuge, a place that is mine and a space that is safe. I look around and I see the ghosts of memories, both happy and sad. Here is the table I laid a cloth over the first time my parents came to visit. This sofa is where an ex-boyfriend was sitting when we broke up. There is the window out of which I then smoked a cigarette, even though I don’t smoke. Here is the bed in which I recovered from pneumonia (it was probably the cigarette). This bedroom, overlooking my neighbour’s garden, is where I watched with envy as they stretched out on deckchairs during the heatwave. Here is the living room, where last week I hosted a leaving party for my friends. We drank champagne, ate crisps and toasted all that had gone before. I’m moving out in a couple of days. It is for the happiest of reasons (to buy a place with the man I love) but I feel an appropriate degree of sadness, too. In saying goodbye to my flat, I’m bidding farewell to a part of my past. It was a great privilege to have a room of my own at a time when I needed shelter. But now, having been put back together, it’s time to move on – and, yes, I’ll be taking my dressing gown with me. This week I m… Watching Years and Years – the Russell T Davies drama detailing a dystopian future that is simultaneously gripping and terrifying in its believability. Wearing Asceno’s classic white silk blazer – the perfect transitional piece to take you from daytime to evening. Listening To the Root of Evil podcast, presented by the great-granddaughters of the prime suspect in the unsolved Black Dahlia murder case. 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