Picture a common teenage bedroom. Now picture a hurricane, tornado, or typhoon blowing through that room and tearing it apart. Clothing, memorabilia, collectables, papers, and books are strewn around the room in a chaotic, haphazard manner rendering is practically unrecognizable as a livable environment. Now you have the image of what my bedroom would look like to an outsider. Anyone not educated in my strange, eclectic, eccentric ways would think I was living in a complete mess. The ironic thing is, everything in my room has a place, and each place has something in it.
Many of the things I own end up on the floor of my bedroom. I am not sure why, but it always seems to happen. I buy a new pair of jeans, and four days later they are lying on the floor at the foot of my bed. I get a new book and after I am done with it, it has fallen to floor at the base of my book shelf. I’ve turned this strange phenomenon into a bit of a system. I have designated areas of floor space for certain things. The area near my closet logically belongs to my clothing and collectables. The area right below my bookshelf is for books and memorabilia, and occasionally a few notebooks. Of course, the area next to my bed is saved for anything I feel the need to use everyday.
The walls of my bedroom are a stark white, meant to be repainted but never were. Covered in magazine clippings and art posters, and postcards and letters, my walls are a jumble of past, present, and future. Posters of paintings by Andy Warhol and Claude Monet inspire me everyday. Clippings from my favorite magazines of people I look up to, and some that I despise, keep me focused on my goals. Postcards from friends and family from far off places keep me connected to the rest of the world.
If I were to describe the size of my room, I would most likely call it a closet. In all reality, it is a five-by-eight rectangle that makes me feel like I am suffocating. Smaller than most people’s laundry rooms, my bedroom is a cramped space overgrown with the things I’ve collected over my short lifetime. A large bookcase in along one wall, exploding with innumerable volumes, takes up almost a fifth of my bedroom. My closet takes up another quarter. My TV stand, and end table, together takes up another quarter. My bed itself takes up almost a third of my floor space. I feel like an animal is a cage that is much too small and with too much stimulation. I’m continually overwhelmed with the magnitude of what I’ve accumulated.
Ever heard the saying “If walls would talk.”? Well, if they could, my walls would have a lot to say. They have heard everything from the beginning of my life up until this very day. Phone calls and sleepovers, sex and drugs, rock and roll, my walls have heard it all. They remember the days of cooties and barbie dolls, when all I wanted to do was listen to Britney Spears and wear lipgloss all day long. Since then they’ve seen me go through my punk phase, fall in love, fall on my face, and fall into step with the path of my life. They could tell you magnificent tales of love and loss, along with some rather boring stories of all nighter study sessions and books that I never quite finished.
A bedroom is a safe haven. Somewhere you can go that is all your own. It is something that you control, your own little world you can escape to. It’s not just a place where you keep your stuff and go to sleep at night. It’s a place where you live and it’s a place where you grow, but most importantly it is a place that you love.
