Rooms

Picture courtesy of http://worldboat.blogspot.com/

I was fifty-eight when I realized there was no use for the whole "life" thing.  I had heard life was a series of rooms and what mattered was who you were stuck with in each room.  This spoke sense to me.

All of my rooms had belonged to someone else, filled with their wishes, their plans, their dreams.  I was nothing more than the person they were stuck with, by choice, maybe by fate.  One thing was clear.  I had no choice.  None of the rooms seemed to be mine.  Looking back, the scenes were what someone else wanted.  I quietly acquiesced to make life easier for all.

The rooms began as a child, and I fit perfectly in the perfect child's room,  meeting the conformity that was expected.  From that room, to the next, to the next.

Tonight I cannot think of a single time, even one room, where I was happy.  Happy like I had expected to be:  soul flying on wings happy, or laughter bubbling in your throat and breaking free into the air happy.

My husband was different in every room.  We had children.  That was what you did.  They had children.  My parents died without me by their side.

I am blocked in a room so dark and dreary that a candle cannot mark the darkness.

Room upon room upon room---for fifty-eight years---and none of them mine.  Not one.

What of me now?  Do I even attempt to make a room, or do I stop the construction?  Shall I stay in this room, alone and in the dark, wondering why more of myself did not break free?  The beacons were merely mirages, tricking me to remain in rooms constructed by everyone but me.

Uncertain, I wait.  For a door, for a light, for the sound of hammers building, building, building.  My own room...