Dear room,
At night, the posters in my room come to life. I watch as my favorite one slowly starts to dissipate, the crisp straight paper twisting at the edges. The silhouettes of the people in the posters fly upwards, making a clear picture in front of my eyes as I lay on my bed. The outline of the people moving on their own, a story played out in my subconscious. It is the time I get swallowed up in the intangible spaces of my head, far away from the realm of reality.
But you already know that.
From the moment I started to cut Rapunzel’s golden hair and tried to make her white dress colorful, when you would silently watch. I think that my doll not falling into my whims was the start of my bitterness. Or maybe it was when the graphite-like piece of wood pushed into my back and I was blamed for it. Who can tell? I’ve felt bitter for as long as I can remember, but now it feels like I’ve hit a new high, and I can’t seem to shake it off without falling into an even deeper pit of bitterness. You always seemed to respond by emitting whiffs of smoky and sweet deodar, perhaps as a fitting response since time hasn’t changed the direction of my thoughts.
The comical creaks of my bed and the sticker collage on my drawers are instances I often look back on. I always knew you wouldn’t be a permanent fixture in my life, keeping me in a cage of safety. That’s why I never felt the need to change you. Even from the moments where I was too scared of the dark to the moment I knew I had to give my temporary ( but everlasting ) goodbye, I held onto your unchanged presence. You still have dollhouses on your cupboards and wind chimes on the mirror. There’s still the wicker basket with darts and the Olympic bunnies Mama threatens to toss away, ( more so keep in the store room, but to me it was all the same.) But somehow, it still remains on the cliffs in the carpet.
You’ve always been constant, and I promise to keep you that way. I won’t let anyone take you away from me, arguing that this place was never truly mine. They may think we’re on the same page,( and I let them) but we’re not even reading the same book. To admit that you—a mere room with a broken bed with two legs and peeling pink walls—mean more than just a place to stay would be seen as weakness. And I promised them I wouldn’t be weak. I refused to be like the 12-year-old girl crying to Baba about leaving the house because it wasn’t truly ours. Now, they see me as a pragmatic robot who understands the value of what she has. But I can’t comprehend it—how can one possess everything and nothing at the same time?
I did try to think of you as just a temporary living space with pigeon nests on the rooftop, but I couldn’t. So I did what made sense for others, to live in the moment. To absorb the waves of loud music playing on Alexa, and the dance of atoms on the ceiling fan. But I don’t know how to. Every moment where I tried to be in it just reminded me of a ticking clock and the revolving earth. Can one live in the moment and also go through the blinks of memory and the grasp of fear? I do not know, but what I know is if I were there right now I would be searching that up (not here, I can not.)
I still don’t know if one day I’ll have to leave, and you’ll be left in pieces. Perhaps I’ll learn to accept it, but for now, time moves slowly, and you remain intact. But maybe the gravity of the situation hasn’t hit me yet. What I know is that someday the realization will be a derailed train heading towards a cliff and my heart will mold and squeeze itself into different shapes. That day, I might change, becoming like glass. Maybe I’ll shatter, and they’ll realize they should’ve handled things differently. Or maybe I’ll become a window, letting sunlight in. But right now, it feels like I’ll just spill over like a jug of water.
But right now, when I think of you, I feel like a sour orange with bitter seeds and a soggy rind. But soon, I’ll come back to you.
And I’ll become a good orange.
Khadija