i remember far too well. that bedroom where i had some of the worst nights of my life. watching The Mindy Project on my sister’s laptop until 4 am. she always fell asleep at 1 am and that was when i took her laptop to my room. there were far too many pillows on that bed. i used as many as i could as i tried to forget your absence. there was only one window. it was tiny. and it had a very effective blind. no light could get in. my mom once called it the darkest room. the darkest room in that giant rented house in that big state with so little in it. there were only 3 lights in that room. the small overhead which cast the room in a yellow sallow light. it reflected off the low cracked wooden beams which i hit my head on multiple times. the other two lights were tiny lamps with bright bulbs blocked by woven straw and when turned on cast irregular shapes on the walls. on the bed. on my face. the whole room smelled like must. my dad told me to air it out. i never did. the pine beams sloped steeply towards the outsides of the house. the ribbed underbelly of a house which seemed normal but under closer inspection showed it was falling apart. it had a beer tap- shiny and inviting. it had exposed pine support beams just above it. one inch cracks flowing through them all. despite its disrepair, i loved the house. i hated it too. it was everything about my life that had gone wrong. in my dark bedroom with yellow light and straw lamps which cast shadows more than light i found home and hell. the pillows and overly fluffy duvet comforted and captured me. i was a guest and a captive. many a night i spent tangled in the too-thick covers staying up until i saw the sun trying to find joy, peace, and suffering in others’ lives which played out on a screen. anything but my own. anything but hitting the refresh button for comments on old posts which i knew wouldn't come. anything but facing the reality of my situation. i spent so much energy through the day pretending like i hadn't done what i had. the facade faded away in those house before sunrise. i stared with puffy eyes at an unfamiliar room. an unfamiliar town. unfamiliar people. i stared with my puffy eyes at a mirror showing a girl i barely recognized and a life i recognized even less. i stayed in that shadowy room. the darkest room. the best for sleeping, my mom said. apt because all i wanted to do was sleep. apt because maybe if i slept long enough i would fade away. cease to exist. i would be lying if i said that i hadn't tried to open that tiny window and throw myself out of it. whether i landed or fell i would be free. or maybe just sit on the roof. shiver the in cold of the summer nights until my body became numb like the rest of me. stare up at that big starry sky and pray that i would float up and join the stars. take me away please. make it easy for me. let me freeze until i become warm. end my suffering and let me join you in the sky. can't you see these bags under my eyes. can't you feel the soreness in my bones. can't you sense the defeat in my drooped shoulders. the misery in my sore throat. the pain in my eyes. the longing in my chest. the suffering in my soul. you can see all of these things but you still won't take me. i ask why. why.

i find my answer in the tiniest flame of a voice in my stomach. saying i haven't truly lived yet. i haven't truly loved yet. i have more boys and more girls to kiss and more jokes to have and more laughs and smiles and more hands to hold and more shoulders to cry on and more music to hear and more nights of dancing until i can't breathe more nights of being happy tipsy with liquor on my lips that makes words slip off my tongue more love to give more people to be loved by more things to learn more steps to take more breaths in my lungs and more life in my cells, my body, my soul, before i may join them up there in the sky. i continued to cry because the life that was ahead of me wasn't there yet and i still doubted that it would ever be. i still do. but the sky still refuses to take me so i must live. i must hurt. i must cry and i must laugh. i must love. i must do all the things involved in living a life i don't know what it will entail yet.

so i will live. i have escaped the room of pine support beams and shadows and i have lived beyond those days. and i will live beyond these. because really i have gotten tired of refreshing and staring at my lock screen for a message which won't come for hours. that is not the life the stars promised me i would have before my cells gave out and i would join them in the endlessness above. i have escaped the pine beams. and i will escape this too. i must escape so that i will feel the sun on my face again. i must escape so that i will fill my lungs completely with fresh air again. so that i will feel springy moss under my bare toes again. feel another’s warm lips on mine. hold another’s hand in my own. perform surgery. fall in love. i must escape so that i may love and live the life the stars have promised me. and live it i will.