Sanctuary

The room is dark when I walk in; the blinds and the curtain are still closed. A soft ticking comes from the alarm clock on the desk; otherwise the room is silent. I carefully pick my way across the mess on the floor to the large glass door on the front wall and open the curtain with a slight flourish. The room is suddenly filled with light, and my immediate thought is of green. The desk, the chair, the bed, the shelves, and the posters on the wall greet the sunlight as it pours into the small space. Upon the light’s entrance, the room comes alive. The painted circles on the walls turn a relaxing shade of pastel green; the photos on the corkboard glow with the faces of family and friends; the titles on the spines of the shelved books shine invitingly.

The mess might have bothered the occasional guest-bed unmade, closet unorganized, papers strewn across the floor-but I walk through it comfortably. The room hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned in a few weeks; the evidence is tossed on the chair, stacked on the desk, and piled on the carpet. Four instruments occupy the portion of the floor at the end of the bed, and an accompanying music stand waits in a far corner. Books of countless genres-fiction and fantasy, mystery and suspense, guidebooks and dictionaries-fill the tall white shelf to the top. The glass door built into the wall next to the bookshelf seems to have no purpose but to let in light; it opens out to the open air above the driveway, with only a wooden fence protecting the observer from a fall to the ground a floor below. Nevertheless, the door is a pleasant gateway of light and a clever addition to the bedroom’s style. It is also a subject of humor in the room; my family and I usually refer to it as the “Suicide Door” due to the pointlessness of its ability to open into midair.

Comfortable, at ease, content-I can spend hours in my room and never get bored. The room has its own aura; I can feel it as soon as I open the door. The air inside has no smell no or taste, but somehow it is still calming after a long day of school. The corkboards on the walls are littered with random sketches and photos, but somehow they always have room for more memories. The stuffed animals in the corner are sad and forgotten, but somehow they still comfort me.

The room’s most noticeable feature is the abundance of stuff; pens, paper, books, clothes, rubber bands, art supplies, water bottles, stuffed animals, coins, pencils, playing cards, instrument swabs, postcards, old toys, notebooks, and key chains can be found in every nook and cranny of the room. Even the tidy bookshelves-the only consistently neat part of the room-manage to have busy, cluttered appearances. Most objects that occupy the room’s space are neither useful nor important, but they all have their own story to go with them.

Despite the disorganization of the room, a stranger could most likely tell the general age of its occupant. The elementary-school level books, the pile of stuffed animals, and the flower-shaped lights on the wall would suggest the presence of a young girl, but other clues show otherwise. Binders are stacked in a shelf on the desk, surveys from colleges are stuffed in the desk drawer, National Geographic magazines lay on the bed, and a laptop computer has its own place on the desk. The style of the room gives away some hints as well: the room’s color never strays away from pastel green and white, the shelves and bed match each other, and an office chair sits in front of the desk.

The room has grown as I have grown, changed as I have changed, and lived as I have lived. It has seen the secrets that make me quiet, it has seen the frustrations that make me cry, it has seen the friends that make me laugh, and it has seen the work that makes me proud. The room has been my sanctuary since I moved into it five years ago, and it continues to be now. The room, like everything in it, has stories of its own. My last birthday saw it transformed as a gift from my parents; the desk, the bed, the shelves, everything was rearranged, and for a terrible moment I was afraid that I would not like my new room; then I realized, regardless of whether I liked it or not (I did), it would still be the place that I felt most at home.

Megumi