I made peace with my house furniture

By Noemi Arnaboldi – I love watching the leaves of trees on days like this. When at a superficial glance they might seem still, yet to anyone who takes the time to stop and observe, they perform elegant, beautiful dances. When the gentle breeze shaping their movement feels just right on your skin. On days like this, when it’s finally getting warmer and it starts to feel like spring, yet, as soon as the sun hides behind some buildings or trees, you are quickly reminded that winter has only just passed, and it is still too soon to leave the house without carrying warm clothes.

“Should we go soon?” she politely suggests, inviting me to get back on our bikes and head home. We have been talking, sitting side by side on this wooden bench, for a good thirty minutes.

It has always been easier for me to open up in parks, woods… All my overthinking suddenly slows down. My head feels less like an overwhelming storm of confused thoughts, and every word feels lighter… I let them come out freely. I stop feeling in conflict with everything and everyone around me, with my own self.

Trees are dear friends to me: wise, strong yet gentle and kind companions.
With their silent, stoic presence, the trees of my beloved Alpine woods taught me, a long time ago, that life, stripped of all our human-made overstructures, is, in its purest essence, simple existence. And this is what trees remind me of whenever I take the time to visit them and let them welcome me into their kingdom: that I can just…be. That I don’t need to prove that my presence is worth being. That, just like trees, just like any other living being, we are merely brief, accidental manifestations of life; and who is there to say whether or not we deserve to be, whether we are worthy of taking up space on this Earth?

“Thanks for the chat. See you tomorrow, yeah?”
“Yes, see you!”
We briefly hug, as we’ve gotten used to doing before saying goodbye, get on our bikes and part ways.

I feel light on my bike. I cycle fast without feeling fatigue. I am serene.
I start recalling my first year in Amsterdam. My first month here, the uncertainties, the doubts: Was it the right decision to leave home? And then, what always follows the memory of that doubt: a moment from a few months before I finished high school and moved here, a very specific moment which reminds me that, back then, leaving was the right thing to do…

I was at home, just back from a morning in school. I was tired. Probably, I had spent the whole drive home complaining to my mum about the terrible Italian education system, about my incompetent teachers; I had probably raised my voice, maybe I had even cried out of stress and frustration: stress because of all the hours I was spending studying, and frustration because I knew I was doing it to succeed in a system I disliked, a system in which students were treated like boxes into which professors simply poured words, only to get to the end of the program...
I was heading upstairs to my room; still in a state of emotional turmoil, presumably walking angrily, almost bumping into every corner. I was crossing the living room, sharply turning left into the very narrow hallway leading to the stairs…and I remember, at that exact moment, my gaze falling on the cabinet I was passing by. It is a short, waist-high wooden cabinet where my father’s CDs are stored. I used to spend a lot of time sitting with my back leaned against that cabinet, listening to music from the speakers placed right in front of it…
In that moment, as soon as it got into my sight, my whole body was struck by an intense feeling of intolerance: I felt anger toward that cabinet. I felt like my whole body couldn’t stand being in the same space as that stupid, boring piece of wood. And not only the CDs’ cabinet: the thought of living in the same building as all the other pieces of furniture in that house suddenly felt unbearable.

I can’t help but smile now. It’s quite funny to admit that whenever someone asks me about the reasons that made me move abroad, the first feeling I recall is the hatred toward my old house furniture…and what that brief moment of hatred really hides: a deeper and long felt sense of boredom and frustration, the feeling of living in a place which feels too tight…
It’s not like that anymore: I’ve made peace with that innocent wooden cabinet; I do miss my house, and going back home feels now like a breath of fresh air.

While cycling around Amsterdam now, I move fast. I navigate the city with confidence; I easily recognize streets and take new routes quite light-heartedly. I do feel at home: I have my friends, my favourite spots, my routine… I have my own cabinet. Not a boring wooden one full of old CDs, but a white cabinet painted with flowers, containing objects of a new, faraway life… of a life I chose…

Yet, every now and then, I feel the need to visit those old friends of mine. I sense a voice softly whispering from some corner of my mind: “It’s getting too chaotic around here… the woods will surely know how to help”.

And so, I respond to this call: I go sit somewhere in a park, a forest, and I just let my mind calm down. I let the sight of coloured leaves and strong branches bring me back to my hometown woods, to my childhood’s most beloved places.
And suddenly, my whole system finds peace again.

Noemi Arnaboldi is bachelor student Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.