It's 2:46AM according to your cellphone, and you wake up from a short fevered dream again. It's been a third night in a row. This room has always been so well-insulated that it was the warmest in the house. Perhaps that's why you unconsciously picked it as your room when you first moved in. And yet things feel different. The clean, contemporary floral wallpaper banner is still on the walls. Even the Japanese Bridge print you scoured the Met gift shop just to find it because it epitomized your love of Monet. The American Girl doll still in its box just as you left it.
And yet here you are wide awake, watching an episode of the other Ghostbusters because it''s the only other thing airing other than infomercials -- which even at this hour does not make any sense.
You had naively hoped that things would be preserved, just as they were. Perhaps a tad more dusty and in desperate need of a vaccuum. You knew this was coming, you've just been in denial. In this wee hours of twilight, it finally hits you. You thought when you hurriedly packed for New York City they would be retrieved later in time. The things you didn't would be thrown out would simply just go away. Instead time passed until someone thought you weren't coming back for them.
Things have been moved and slightly replaced with something different, but you are unsure as the furniture is still just as white as before. There are books in the bookshelf in the corner but a lot of them are missing; ironically you found them in a box in the living room the other day. You pray that collection of stuffed animals have traveled to the Land of Misfit Toys beause at least they would have a home. Strangely all your ugly socks are still matched and in the drawer.
You are more awake now and not going back to sleep anytime soon. You need to rid the echoes of the perpetual nightmare you are having but its hard when you are thinking where things were ten years ago.
This no longer your home. Your home is in New York City where you can go where you want, when you want. Where things are familiar and you know exactly where there are and supposedly should be.
Here you feel trapped and bored and scared to leave the room. Or rather it's so warm than everywhere else feels so cold. At some point your insomnia has spurred an epiphany: perhaps this was a metaphor for the real world. That you had a choice: you have to outside in order to eat or do nothing and be warm and happy in your makeshift womb. The revelation causes some part to die inside.
However there are remnants of a person living here that you've become incredibly bored to the point of napping away your trip. You are a ghost haunting your own room. You were in such a rush to leave that without realizing the consequences of being left behind. And here you are finding childhood things rearranged or simply gone; it might be too late for you to settle things before heading towards the light.
Yet as you search for a stuffed goat that your husband gave you in college, you realize not everything was rescued. And as strange as it may seem, you kind of still want that ratty old bear you used to sleep with.
Staying here for the week after a long hiatus still proves fruitless. Before you left you were determined to find the things that were still of importance. However you been away too long and the house has become too foreign and you've forgotten even where the spoons are. The basement, though, is still dark, damp and terrifying. Which means it is probably down there.
Here you are frantically rescuing everything bit by bit like that dream everyone has once in awhile. Like that dream, the building is burning and you are still packing but there is always one last thing.
Then one more last thing.
And then another.
And another.
Until you realized it should have gone down with you inside it a long time ago.
Is this what growing up feels like?
