What was the best thing about leaving home?

[woowoobs]

For me it was no longer having to live in such a bad atmosphere anymore. My dad was a really difficult man to live with, and in the last year I lived there it was just awful. I also had to look after my siblings a lot and my parents always put them first.

Another thing is I wasn't allowed to eat/wash/make noise after about 8 o clock. Even now (15 years later) I love being able to stay up as late as I want, have a bath when I want etc.

Solitude. I grew up in a tiny, overcrowded house which we shared with several elderly family members, and there was literally never anywhere to be alone, or to do your homework in peace and quiet, or take a shower without several people banging on the door -- and I always shared a room with at least one sister plus an aunt or my grandmother.

When I lived in my tiny student bedsit, I was incandescent with happiness at being able to cook and eat what I wanted, when I wanted it, to be able to leave down a book on a chair and find it still there when I came home, to leave a box of chocolates on a table and find no one had savaged it while I wasn't looking.

My pleasures were touchingly simple!