As I lay in bed I take into account the little things – my room door is now a lovely blue colour instead of the stark black it used to be. My bedroom is still in a state of adamant disarray, as if defying the fact that I have left it absent for eight months. My books no longer sit on my bookshelf, instead they now lay in stacks of boxes, making it impossible to locate one that I made a point to come back for. Yet nothing has really changed. The little black frame with little rosebuds arranged in a heart shape, a gift from my best friend more than a decade ago, still hangs next to the light switch. On the top shelf, the Absolut bottles I used to collect are now gone, but my cocktail shaker still sits there by itself. The pink and black circles I painted on the wall to cover the floor-to-ceiling mural I painted in high school still float quietly on three coats of white. Then I realise that my apartment in Sydney looks a lot like my room but instead of the bright fuchsia that dominates my room, I’ve picked a bolder version of it instead: red. Is this a metaphor of different stages of my life? I realise now what has been bugging me since coming back – it is not the city that has changed, it is I.
