Tangled in Gray & Eternal Blue

Tucked in-between clustered acres of agricultural land sits a lonely white house. I was just three when I crossed its threshold, initially intimidated by the tall, sprawling walls that boasted the occasional crack from earthquakes of years past. It wasn’t like any of the houses I had ever lived in before; it was spacious, younger than the age of thirty, solitary, and silent: like a lone cactus standing confidently amidst miles of empty desert. Being locked within its embrace often made my child-like mind feel like it existed in a world apart from my reality; a new world with unbridled possibility where the air was cool and smelt of burning vanilla cinnamon candles instead of manure, and the kids from our former neighborhood were replaced with cleanly arranged aisles of my Ty Beanie Babies.

I never felt as happy as I did within the confines of my room. It was the first space I ever could call my own, and I recall the four walls loosening their grip on me as I settled into my new change of scenery— it felt safe, exciting, and sacred, like my own secret garden forever out of any other human’s reach. I was not an antisocial or a shy kid, not by any means; I liked finding commonalities between myself and others, adults and kids alike, and surely wasn’t afraid to stand up and speak for myself when I felt it was needed. However, some ounce of myself never felt truly comfortable around others, not even around my pair of sisters and parents who lived just down the hall. I wasn’t funny like most of the other kids and wasn’t a good enough dancer like my sisters and cousins to win the family’s attention and affection. As I grew older and began to shelter myself from social situations, my adoration for my room only bloomed further.

To me, my bedroom was freedom: my Narnia chock-full of possibilities and surprises that my mind would carefully craft, much like a poet trying to find the perfect cadence in which to carry their stanza. I would shuffle around my bed and dresser set to construct new structures with blankets and pillows galore and would spend all too much time writing fictional stories in the yellow glow of my nightlight much after my bedtime. When my parents would scold me about my aggressive reading habits and my sisters would scowl at the very sound of my then high-pitched voice when I came down the hall, I knew I could always return to my room to find safety and solace once more. My stuffed animals became my friends as I harnessed my fascination for literature, an everlasting love that continues to burn brightly.

Yet, as with most relationships, my connection to my room soured with time. I entered adolescence bound to the restrictions of a perpetually unhappy state of mind, and the familiarity of my room began to make it feel like an intimidating prison once more. The youth had finally begun to flee from my doughy face, and in its place came dark under-eye bags and areas of patchy stubble strewn across my then-developing jawline. In time the blue walls that my mom had surprised me with when we moved into the house also changed, eventually shifting to a deep charcoal gray, only after my parents refused to allow me to paint the walls black. My Beanie Babies also became aquatinted with the darkness as I banished them to plastic storage bins and sequestered them into the depths of the closet where they still sit to this very day.

Eventually, there was nothing more that the small desert town could offer me, and at age seventeen I harnessed every last bit of faith I had left and set off to establish a new life for myself: a new existence where no one knew the person I once was, and there was not a single living soul that could hinder the liberation that I had craved for so long. I enrolled in a school eleven hours away from my hometown and began to focus on the one remnant of my childhood that I had not come to completely despise: writing.

Even now, visiting that house still feels me with the same sense of unrelenting claustrophobia, as if my very presence inside its structure beckons the walls to come alive to pound my optimism and dreams into dust. It’s quieter now than it ever has been, with only my parents left within the house’s sturdy grasp. When I move through the halls I can feel my pace slow as every feeling of happiness, sorrow, anger, and hope comes rushing back to me, haunting me of the life I have worked so hard to lay to rest.

I crack open the door to my bedroom and peer at the darkness inside, only to see the all-too-familiar image of myself as a seven-year-old, cradling my notebook and pencil in the glow of the nightlight. His skin is still pure and full of youth, yet his spirit is silent, eternally entombed within that darkened room. Though I've come to find that no serenity is exempt to the cruelties imposed by the passing of time, when I close my eyes, I can only recall those bedroom walls still painted in boisterous hues of vibrant blue.