I'm staring blankly at the things in my room, wondering how many boxes would my life fit into? Not as much as it should, I know.

A lot of the things I grew up with were all carefully given or thrown away over the years we've moved many houses. You could say we lived almost a nomadic type of lifestyle. Never having had a place to call home, and sometimes relying on the kindness of friends who had a little extra space for a family of four. We'd even once had to live in room that was originally a colonial home servant's quarters. Now that we've finally settled in to a place we call home and having watched my parents become genuinely house proud, after barely four years, one by one the nest grows empty.

My brother moved out a few weeks ago. And very soon, it will be my turn. This time, definitely, for good.

"Pack everything... Anything you leave behind will be thrown away,"

my dad said to me. Initially I thought that it would be easy, to leave my nostalgic past behind and I could come back to it here. That isn't the plan for the family though, for the next five years. So now I have to decide, to take it with me or throw it all away.

I am almost afraid to sift through the things I hoarded along with me all these years. A stack of diaries, piles of letters from old boyfriends and pen-pals, shoe boxes full of ticket stubs... Useless mementos of things I had been privileged to do with my meagre allowance. If I pored over them, I know that bitter-sweet memories will be triggered. Precisely the reason why these things were kept in the first place. Yet, is there room for it where I am going?

My life right now is clearly split into two, geographically. My past, and my future. Do I carry with me any of these things? Baggage of a past that makes me who I am today. Or do I completely disown them as material rubbish, and leave with a clean slate?

I am lost in a transition, bearing the temporal over the eternal.

Jesus said to him, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." ~ Matthew 8:20