June 22, 2001

So, my parents are selling our house.
And I have to dismantle the room it's taken me ten years to build.
I know just about everyone has to go through this kind of thing,
But it's been incredibly hard for me.
To begin with, I don't just have posters on my wall.
I have LAYERS of posters and collages that date back to when I was seven.
I'm one of those people with an acute sense of horor vacuii - a deep-set need to fill every inch of space with something, anything.
I'm one of those people that fills out every question on every questionnaire I can get my hands on and then doodles on it afterwards.
I realize that I am luckier than most of the world to even have my own room to live in,
And that I really shouldn't whine to begin with because at least I don't have to share the room with my whole family,
At least I sleep inside an insulated building, etc. But suffering is subjective, and this has been super tough.

Culminating my layers of artwork on the wall, built up like coral over the years, I have covered every inch of wall and ceiling space
With all kinds of neat fabrics and then decorated the fabric with artwork and postcards and posters and x-mas lights and dried flowers and
…well, you get the idea.

So, it's a physically taxing job to tear this thing down, but I could use that kind of exercise.
What hurts is that every item of every layer has a profoundly significant anchor to my sense of self, sense of personal history, emotions, and outlook on life.

There are drawings that my first boyfriend's little brother made me beneath collages I stayed up late putting together with my best friend in elementary school. (We didn't have glue and used pieces of the gum in our mouths to stick the things together)
There are paintings my friends made, people I love but have lost contact with.
There's painting on the wall where I constructed elaborate designs to avoid studying for finals one year.
There are all the flowers anyone has ever given me, dried and hanging from the ceiling.
There are drawings a boyfriend made for me while he was in the hospital, sick as hell.
There are photographs and clippings of people and things that have changed my life.
There's a poem my first girlfriend wrote me, hidden behind my 8th grade class photo.
There's the place I kissed the ceiling in ugly pink lipstick when I was 8.
There's pi up to the 70th digit running down the edge of my closet door.
There's wax on the wall where a friend stormed out of the house once, knocking a candle off my desk.

Whatever.
I romanticize everything.
I am in love with my life and much of my life has played itself out in this room.
It's the only space I have ever felt I owned.
But I don't, it's not mine.
And I'm just coming to terms with that.

Everything has been whitewashed.
Of course, it looks very nice, but it's a barren wasteland of empty walls, ceiling, floor and bookshelves.
It's marketable, like a hotel room, but not a place to live.
I spent two weekends, crying like a silly fool, tearing pieces down, and shaking with sobs so deep my jaw felt broken.

See, I have this very acute sense of place.
It's hard for me to find places where the vibe is right and I can settle in and feel comfortable.
Usually, I feel like everything is on everyone else's terms and I try and fit myself in-between their lines without losing myself or going crazy. But every now and then I run across a café or a library or a certain bookstore or someone's bedroom or living room or car that I feel completely at peace with.
There are a few places that make my whole body and something beyond that feel very much at home.
I curl in and feel like cats look when they're just purring, eyes shut and paws tucked under them.
It took me a decade to get my room tuned just right… and when it was in its golden state,
It was my favorite place in the whole world to be.
It's where I would run to lick my wounds, to be a hermit, to sort out a complicated issue, to read, to write,
To be my raw self without any apologies.

And now it's real cute, something straight out of whoever designs every Carrow's and Coco's and Marie Calendars.
But the light is garish and it smells like plastic.
And sometimes, I'd much rather be sleeping in my car.
Anyway, it's the final nail in the coffin, as much as I am feverishly clinging to it, My childhood is over.
And that's lousy, because I really don't care much for adults.
They're just as cruel and selfish and immature as kids are, but it's uglier with them because most of them can't plead naivete.

I always thought that becoming an adult would suck, but at least it would come with that flood of knowledge and ability and confidence and assurity that all adults possessed. And now all the adults around me are confiding to me that they're just as uncertain, they feel just as incapable and worried as they did when they were kids. On top of that, they've watched their years run by faster than lightening and they're not living the life they optimistically imagined when they were 20. Their relationships have all failed in major ways, they let their bodies go, focusing on work, and feel like there's very little they can do anymore that brings them much joy.

I guess that doesn't seem much connected to taking my room apart.
But I had way too much time to sit and stew in that horrible destruction.
All I could think about when I was packing up all my boxes of love letters and photographs and books was how we threw out boxes of my grandmother's stuff after she died.
All her scrapbooks with pictures of people we all never knew, carefully chronicled vacations and trips and events.
We kept as much as we could that had some relevance to our lives that held our interest, but so much just got junked.
The things that I prize most are trash to everyone else.
Maybe I'm the only one that has this romantic thread that thinks all of the journals and photo albums I've invested so much time and love and life into will become treasures to my grand children or at least some philanthropist somewhere who will gasp and say "What treasures these are! And no one recognized this GENIUS in her lifetime?!"

It's a rude awakening to fully realize that truly, nobody will care that much.
Someday, someone will have to toss my boxes out, with their own load to carry.
I packed my life up into a bunch of boxes, and realized how little time I have in this existence.
The only place that has ever been home is now whitewashed and does not belong to me.

I am working on seeing this as a positive opportunity for new beginnings and to welcome the chance to have a new canvass.
I think I might get there soon.
But right now, I am sulking and being a bitter, insolent brat with nothing better to do than feel very sorry for myself.