As promised, I’m back here to share my honest experiences and this weekend has presented me with one that I want to talk about.
This weekend was the first of 2020 and also the weekend my little sister moved into a flat with her boyfriend. She is 22 and has been in a long distance (London-Belfast) relationship with him for nearly 4 years. They 100% deserve to be making this exciting move together.
The whole move was a right old palaver and, being the older sibling, I naturally was employed for the debacle.
It began with sister flying back from Belfast, where she’d spent New Year on Friday. My parents dropped off the big car at my work and I drove it back to London that day. (Sister’s track history with cars means I had to be the one doing the driving). Friday night saw us illegally parked in Putney eating pizza and dismantling a bed.
Saturday morning we did tip trips and packed the car up with her worldly goods. By midday, and after moving the car around various different non-parking spots, we set off for her new abode in Finsbury Park (via picking up the key in King’s Cross).
We unloaded the car at the flat (illegally parked… I am fully expecting a fine to come through but I’ll be damned if I’m paying that one) and dumped all the stuff in the flat. The flat had no hot water and no mattress so sister had to spend the night at mine. That night, the boyfriend set off from Belfast, having finished his final gig at 10pm and catching a ferry at 2am.
Sister and I had a night in Clapham Junction like any other normal Saturday with my current housemate and my sister’s old housemate: BYOB Thai Dinner (for those of you that know Kaosarn on St John’s Hill – you know) and then a pub (The Roundhouse – great pub). Sister woke up at mine early on Saturday and headed back to Finsbury Park to start making a house a home. I barely woke up to say goodbye.
Two hours later I woke up to begin my day but felt quite miserable.
I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt bad. I cancelled my plans with my friends and did some life admin. My friends rang to see if I would join them and I ended up bursting into tears on the phone.
It suddenly occurred to me – I am actually so sad that my sister has moved in with her boyfriend. It’s the end of an era.
She has always been my go to girl for a spontaneous pub session or gig. She quite often comes over to nurse my hangovers with a vegan sausage roll and a Lucozade. She’s so much of a pal she comes on all my uni friend holidays and nights out. I’m so thrilled for her and her boy to be finally living together but where does that leave our relationship?
The next chapter, that’s where.
And I think what makes the sadness stronger is how different my chapter looks to hers now. None of my immediate friendship group live with their partners yet (… I don’t even have a partner!). Ever since she caught up with me at university (I took a gap year and a year abroad) we’ve done everything together. She joined me at Nottingham University, she joined me in SW London, we’d always go back to our parents’ on the same weekends…
Anyway, here we are and thankfully for me I have incredible friends who managed to pick up on the fact that my texts saying ‘no don’t worry you don’t need to come over’ meant ‘please please come over and make me feel better’. So I spent this evening with two of my very best friends eating pasta and chocolate.
And so tomorrow a new week begins…