Christchurch City from my Window April 1995

When I saw the prompt for tomorrow’s photo on @fatmumslim’s photo a day challenge for June, I knew this was the photo I wanted to share.

I have taken many photos that I love. Photos of my children or other people I love dearly. Photos of amazing things in far away places. Photos of fun times, old times and now forgotten times. So why is this, not even very good photo, my favourite? I know it doesn’t look that special.

I took this photo from the bedroom window of the first flat I lived in. I moved out of home at 16 years old in winter- and it only lasted a month until my parents wooed me back with roast meals and roaring fires – but that month was amazing in so many ways.

I managed to live in a house with two guys that seemed to live in a constant party of drugs and alcohol. I managed to go to work and school every day even when one the boys forgot to buy power and my alarm didn’t go off. Even when I’d spent half the night before trying to warm my frozen toes with a tealight candle (doesn’t work by the way). Some days I would come home from work and step over comatose guests in the hallway.

I learnt a lot in that month. I learnt about myself, my world and what I was and was not ready for.

I loved being able to walk to school and to the coffee houses I spent most of my spare time at. I felt independent and very sophisticated in my inner city flat. I loved being able to look out my bedroom window and see the Cathedral in the middle of the city.

The Cathedral is no longer there. This view no longer exists. Which makes this photo all the more special. Along with whatever metaphors you can think of for a time now gone, a lost youth, a coming of age of a girl I once was. Vulnerable and strong at the same time.

This photo is so much more than it seems.

This photo has been my favourite since I took it. I framed it in a chunky gold frame and it was hung on the wall of every house I lived in since then. It is now in storage waiting to be hung on another wall in the next house.

What was your first flat like?