Emily May

 

MY LITTLE ROOM

 

I'm trapped in a prison of my own creation. A personalized hell, wearing the face of everything I've lost. Making sure to always remind me that I'm not complete. Making sure I never forget the pain.

 

Imagine.

A bright, sun filled room. Loud with such promising joy and excitement. It is in this room that you share laughs with your family and play games to pass the time together. This room, where you grew up with your sister, your brother, and watched them grow. The room where you talked all night and all day with your best friends. The room you experienced music for the first time. Your first love and that very first kiss, felt and treasured in this room. Love follows you in this room because it's where you danced together, held each other, protected each other. This room is your happiness, your safe haven. Everything you love is in this room. You wake up here smiling because you feel alive. You breathe in the new day and exhale endless possibilities. You're in love with the person you are - in this room, surrounded by everyone and everything precious to you. Feeling the happiest that you've ever been, you can't think about life any other way and you assume this is how it will always be. Just like this.

Imagine.

You were wrong.

A storm shuffles through. Winds of destruction shake the room. Things begin to collapse, objects fall and break, the foundation of your happiness is being altered. The sunlight is the first to be taken. It's booming rays of light snuffed out by the grey, heavy clouds. Everyone sits with the darkness, trying not to let it affect them. But no matter how hard they all try, the room fills with a bitter chill and they can feel the sorrow bury itself inside. Without sunshine, nothing in the room feels right.

The change happens gradually, taking its toll, slowly creeping past the point of no repair. Each of the things you love vanishing. It feels like they all disappeared without warning but the truth is, you watched them walk out. You didn't fight for them, you didn't ask them to stay. Not until it was too late. You held the door open for them and then wondered why no one stuck around.

Eventually you find yourself alone, in a dark void of a room, sitting in agony over all your losses. Losses you can't fully grasp because the lack of surrounding love was rendered you numb. When it does hit you, it smashes through you all at once. Like a thousand swords piercing your skin, leaving you raw and exposed. Now you find yourself waking up crying, simply because you managed to wake up again.

The moment the pain shoots through you like a rocket and the utter loneliness settles in truly, you finally hear someone outside. For the first time since everything disappeared, you hear his voice. A voice you'd recognize anywhere. Racing to the window you see him and cry. He's returned, you think. He's come back for you, you hope. You scream his name over and over until you have his attention. Finally he looks at you and it almost makes you feel relieved, like your saved. The eye contact burns holes in your skin and the emotion floods you. Choking on the feelings, you reach your hand out through the small gap, trying to force your way to him. Your heart stops entirely and you are pushed over the edge with his next move. Away. He turns and leaves, acts as if you were never there at all. You drop your hand, let it fall limp, to your side. Not willing to give up, holding on to the reminisce of happiness, you keep screaming his name. You punch and pull and claw at the glass, its wooden framing. Anything to get you closer to him but nothing moves other than him. He's gone. And the lingering burning sensation from his cold stare, never fades.

 

There's a knock at the door and every fibre, every nerve, every cell in your body prays it's him. You're filled with hope again.

As you try to open the door, you pull with all your strength but it doesn't move. The hinges shake and the slab of wood bangs against the frame but it doesn't open. It's locked. Locked from the inside.

You keep pulling and pulling and pulling but without a key, it is never going to open. The knocking gets louder, almost smashing through your skull but you can't do anything to stop it. All you can do is scream.

Moments like these pass. Different - or the same - people try to get back in after leaving but nothing gets through. The room echoes with stillness as you walk in circles, feeling how utterly alone you are. The weight of the room pounds in your chest. So you sit, defeated, with your head against the wall. Letting the darkness consume you. Feeling it lace your every thought.

You can still hear people talk to you, still feel them reaching for you. Sometimes you even work up the courage to reach back. That's what it takes to talk, to try - courage. Courage to search endlessly through yourself to find the will to communicate to others so they don't worry. But every time you do, you hit the wall, the door. All you can do is talk through the gaps, the holes. There but not really.

Now you sit underneath the table and block out the knocking. You pray they leave you alone, because being so close to them without being anywhere near them is torture. And they don't understand and you can't make them.

 

Time passes and you remain trapped inside a locked room, surrounded by the things that once made you happy, now acting as reminders of the person you used to be. Happy, bright, welcoming. Not beaten down, dark and twisty. With fewer people coming to see you, little by little, you can feel the way they no longer enjoy your presence, but rather put up with it. You feel like a caged animal locked in an enclosure at the zoo. Nice in theory, good from a distance but still an animal. A misunderstood, out of place, from a different species, animal.

The wild beast within you rages on as you blame the universe. Blame the storm that started it all and blame the people that left. You even blame the people still coming to knock at your door - for not trying hard enough to break you out, for never noticing that you're trapped. You blame everything imaginable, everything but yourself.

The strange part is, you are the only one to blame. Honestly, who else is there?

They may have walked away but you held the door open and waved goodbye. You expected them all to fight for you when you couldn't even fight for yourself. You were wrapped up in the illusion of your perfect life that you couldn't possibly imagine the day would come when it wasn't perfect. You were naive to think it could stay the same - a picture perfect. Not a thing out of place. Everything right where you needed it, wanted it. But the picture was torn, leaving you on the floor to disappear while the others continued their happily framed lives.

 

After a year of hiding under a table - too afraid to move - you're feeling fed up with the way life turned out. Reaching inside your own being, you pull out, at first, a grumble. A low vibration of built up frustration. But the sound grows as you think about where you are. Pushing out more volume, it becomes a louder groan as you remember - barely - how it used to feel to smile every day. How it felt to feel people beside you, supporting you, caring for you, right next to you.

Now, with shaking legs and joints that barely know how to be joints, you push yourself to your feet. At first you crouch in front of the table, using it as a crutch to keep you up. Thinking about the person you've become turns your shaking legs to solid stone, strong enough to hold you. Standing up straight you release a thunderous roar and watch it explode as you remember this version of yourself, the way it pushed people away, then hid from the world. You have people outside that door, but you can't see them, you can't feel them. It's almost as if they aren't there at all. There's a door in the way. A door. A piece of wood is preventing you from feeling your own life again. And you're the coward that shut it.

Running, charging at that useless blocking piece of wood, you use all your energy and throw yourself at it, screaming about all the pain the whole way there. The door shakes but stills, not feeling your hurting soul quite strong enough. Letting it build again, another roar bellows from your core. It shakes the entire room.

You're mad.

The sadness that has been bottled up inside - on the verge of overflowing and drowning you - has finally done just that - overflowed and turned into a boiling hot rage.

You remember - thoughts dance around the inside of your head, taunting you. The storm came and took everything you loved away.

You trusted them. Believed them.

They promised to never leave, to be different from the others in your past.

Their betrayal thumps in your ears as you yell again and ram into the door.

Again and again and again.

You thought they loved you or at least cared enough to notice the four walled hell you've been suffering in for too long. But no one. No one saw you. They kept acting like you were the one in the wrong, the one who needed to apologize.

No.

You release all the air from your lungs in one last exhaled scream. Removing all the feelings and the imprisonment of the past, you charge again.

Bruised, beaten and bloody. Alone, scared and angry.

You pause … and take a deep breath in … and step away from the door. The cage around you has been built on your own actions, denials, emotions. Owning your mistakes, taking responsibility for your part in your own life, gives you a piece of yourself back.

In this moment, fighting for yourself but also against yourself, reminds you that happiness cannot be locked away and hidden. It cannot be forced or faked. It must flow and shine like sunlight.

You stand broken, cracked and abandoned but you still stand. On your own two feet. You have lost everything you held dear but you stand, staring at a splinter, a gap in that useless door that held you back for so long. You're staring at the first ray of sunshine you've seen since the storm.

It may only be a crack, only a single spot of light, and the four walls may still surround you, but it's hope. There is still a world outside, and you are still alive. You are the key to unlock the prison around you. You can escape and rebuild happiness, without a door. You have the ability to run and breathe and smile and shine again.

 

Imagine.

Breaking free from the past. Letting go of everything you've been through. Not allowing it to keep you underneath a table anymore. Running free and on your own. Feeling the sun on your face finally. And knowing you've made it because you were able to understand the difference between alone and lonely. Accept that people left and not let that change you on the inside.

Imagine.

Happiness. Somewhere new. Perhaps in an open field. Someplace vast, never ending. No doors, no walls, no prison. You can run and feel again. Because you are standing. Because you can live without them. Because you are more then what they saw. Because you can be anything as long as you keep standing.

So keep standing. Keep living. Keep going, even if the urge to hide knocks on your internal door. Keep fighting. Keep growing. Keep thriving in your own company. Keep standing.