Memoir about a room.

I sat alone in the room. Clouds of dust floating around as if they were the airborne ashes of the foul memories that originated here. I look at the now faded blue walls and imagine a time when they were pristine and beautiful. My mother painted them when I was nine. It was the only thing I had wanted for my birthday that year, to replace the bland grey with a color that rivaled that of the endless sky. She died a few years after, leaving me with my father, but I may as well have been alone. He was never at home, and when he was, he was either passed out drunk or high as a kite. In the rare moments when he was conscious, he would treat me as a punching bag. I had become closely acquainted with the medicine cabinet, especially in my teenage years. I stared at my carpet, once a white shag piece that mom always told me was cut from a polar bear’s fur (when in actuality was bought from the thrift shop downtown), had accumulated many stains from my youth. Blood from the beatings I took from my father, spilt alcohol from the nights I could sneak it away and drown out my sorrows, and more blood from the times I took the pain away for myself. The windows were dirty. I could hardly see through them. I recalled the many times that I woke to the sound of my dad screaming for me from the ground, or looking out the once clean window and seeing him laid out half naked in the lawn, his hands clutching an empty bottle. I took a sip from my own, like father like son I suppose, and looked around the room to reminisce a bit more. I saw my bed. The place I’d spent years crying myself to sleep. When mom was alive, her and my father would scream at each other every night. Their voices echoing through the house and bouncing around in my head. Those screaming voices stuck with me throughout my life. I still hear them some nights. I sat on my bed and finished off the bottle. I looked down at my arms and remember the only times the pain wasn’t there. I see the scars that grew exponentially with my sadness. I couldn’t take being alone, and empty, and sad. I needed something to take away the hurt. A razor became my best friend. I had felt the cool sting of the blade against my skin many times in this room. It comforted me. It distracted me from the scary world out there. I lay down and stare at the ceiling. Spiderwebs hung in each corner. Marvelous works done by miniscule hands. The worked together to create their masterpiece. They had family, and friends, and a home. I never had any of that. Yes, I have this house, and this room. But I have never had a home. A place I wished to go back to, a place where people loved me, and place I was happy. I don’t know why I came back here. This room keeps me chained to the world I don’t want to live in. The one with my father, with my ugly carpet, and with my pain. I want to leave it behind, but it won’t let me go. I always find my way back here. This room is my prison, my punishment for not ending it all when I had the chance. I look around one last time before leaving that place and locking the door behind me. I hoped to never walk into that room again, but I knew that we would meet again, and again. Because that room, while it is my own hell, was the closest thing to a home I ever had.