I need to clarify something here....this story is FICTION!!! None of the events in this story happened...ever...it was something I wrote a few weeks after graduating from High School in 2002...the Grammar is terrible...the thought process is shaky...but I really like the potential for this story...I probably should work on it some more...that said...enjoy...
It had been quite some time since I had last placed foot inside the room. And as I walked in I knew this was going to be hard and utterly depressing. I had hidden from that moment for so long. My eyes did a quick scan of the room. The small bed was still in the corner, the sheets still clinging to the old mattress. The oak dresser hugged the wall at the end of the bed. Drawers still full of the clothes she left behind to someday be taken to some thrift store, where some punk kid would find another kids past and this kids fashion. The walls still were adorned with posters, pictures, knick-knacks, and memories. The bookshelf in the corner, although very dusty, still had every book I loved and lived through in high school. The stereo that had sung its better days in the early nineties demanded the attention of the final corner of the room next to the closet. I opened the doors as if to a whole different world and I was taken on a ride down memory lane back to the days of yesterday.
I loved and feared these four walls of my past. I say feared because the snap shot of her is imprinted in this room and ultimately my mind. She was everything to me and she will remain only in this room. This is the only place you will find her. I have shut her out of everything else that I am dedicated to. I have hidden her here in this room.
The bed where she slept and spent countless nights dreaming, thinking of her future, and really just losing sleep. This bed is a lot like my own bed at home, the one where I spent nights devoted to the thought of her and our future. The visions of being with her and prayers that were heard from this bed, but sadly lost that day. The day she was take from this petty world. And now the skylight above that bed of hers will lead all who look through it, to not just wish on the heavenly stars, but look at those stars and see her sparkling eyes shining back to earth.
She always loved the “ heavens” and I will be obsessed from now on with this heaven, the one that clothes me every day. The dresser is covered in pictures of the two of us, and our spontaneous adventures. The adventures taking us to the beach, mountains, states, and lakes all ending in some fun moment planned by her or me.
The mirror just above the dresser does not completely reflect the man I am because of her. It only imitates what I react to, and how I dress, it has no clue how I feel inside. The styles and trends that formed me and truly her will remain inside these drawers. Her drawers that have held not just articles of clothing, but a box of memories as well. The letters from her, sacred pictures, ticket stubs to romantic tragedies. (Yes those are just like the ones plastered upon the walls.)
Every moment of her and I is documented, and captured on these four walls. In the box is the photo of her and I on our first date and my favorite our first kiss on top of the Ferris wheel at the state fair. Posters of bands, people, culture, and her dramatic interest claim most of the cluttered space, all-leading to a towering case of books. Books I she read and I read dozens of times, from the works of Crichton and Grisham, to Tozer and C.S. Lewis. Novels, poetry, fiction, scripts, documents, and theological statements took up most of the space on the shelves.
One of the shelves was dedicated to the Bible and her fascination with it. This is where I have found my true inspiration to live with her gone. For in these pages is life, a gift of love, and hope for all who receive this love. She claimed it and believed it with her all. Although I think she just tagged along with my faith. She had good intentions and we were one together in Christ.
We worshiped him together. Many a day we would pop in a disc and sing away to some new worship tune, and I would try and sing my best and it would make her laugh. Funny how the same machine played our favorite songs to dance to be skylight, songs of love, happiness, depression, death, life, and conviction. I cherish the moments when we would dance together more than anything else in life. Fir it’s dancing with her where I fell in love with her. A not easily broken, but the dance shoes have disappeared into the closet for now.
A closet with dresses, sweatshirts, costumes, shoes, and boxes of who she was and tried to be. Yes dresses she hated to wear because it wasn’t her style. Sweatshirts formerly mine that she loved to wear because she liked how they fit. Costumes she wore in all her theatrical personalities. Someone had to play the part and she became one with the character. And look, there are her dancing shoes; right in front of the sandals she wore our last day together. The sand still streaming from them when I pick them up, and the smell of the sea captivates me. That smell reminds me of that dreadful day. I can still see that cobalt wave crashing over her and stealing the breath from her lungs and then claiming her body to the curl and pull of the waves that would suffocate and steal her beautiful life.
The memory hurts and cuts like a knife, but hope and grace shine from above. A light is suddenly shining on the most incredible object in the room, the journal that holds everything inside its pages. And you open it and are relieved to find yourself again, the thought and spark of moving on in life, living with an undying passion stoked by a love stronger than a death and hate in itself. I am compelled to smile as I walk out of the room. For no longer will she be hidden here in this lonely room, she will be shared to all who listen and this room is just a museum of that which she held dear, but a reminder that we cannot stop from living life and letting our faith shine through it. As I shut the door I am motivated to scream out a life worth living and a God worth sharing, and so I walk on and into this blind world.-Me
