It was in middle school when we were asked to write a wish on colorful papers given to us by our teachers. Some of my friends wrote the name of the college in which they wanted to study, some of them wrote fame, wealth and the people with whom they wanted to be friends with. What I always wanted was a room of my own. A room, whose walls I would decorate with my sketches and imperfect paintings, with my favorite quotes from my favorite writers, with pictures of the meaningful people in my life and with a music system along with the most artistic albums from my favorite singers. I wanted one more thing in my room, a pen and a notebook. I wanted to write, I wanted to be an artist.
So, I made this very clear to my husband that I will be having a room of my own in our new house. It has been three days since I have completely set up my room as per my conditions. I even took a day off because I wanted everything to be placed exactly as I had imagined when I wrote my wish in middle school. But it has been seven days already and I did not go into my room except to open it up for the maid to clean the floor.
I had already informed my husband to not wait for me at the bus stand because I will be coming late from work. What a terrible day it was! The manager was so mean to reject all of my work. He could have at least told me my mistake in private. What was the whole point of creating a scene in the office? It's not that the rest of the days in my life are any different. It's all the same. Rejections, embarrassments, and disapprovals remind me everyday how needless I am in this world. It is as if the whole world wishes for me to disappear, to be dead. I have become a fallen, dry autumn leaf, lying solitary, lost and absolutely alone on an unknown path where people come and go and crush me below their feet and all I could do, is to produce unpleasant noises of crumbling and breaking down, falling into bits and pieces on the concrete, harsh and a rough unnamed road. These days, I have become quite immune to rejections and embarrassments maybe, because my dry autumn leaves have broken into tiny bits which cannot break any further.
My office is at a short distance from the bus stand so I usually prefer to walk alone. I used to come to the office with one of my colleagues but while walking with her, I found that she was always ahead of me, she never walked beside me, it was as if I was chasing her all the time. I have been chasing people all my life. I tried hard to make some people stay in my life and even to compete with them but I always found that no matter how fast I ran, the distance between us never decreased.. Now, I have stopped doing that and I walk alone from the bus stand to the office. This morning, I felt something weird about the traffic. Does everyone live like this? Is everyone trapped inside their cars in a long traffic? Why is anyone not opening the door and getting out of it? I had a strong urge to break all those doors and free myself from this labyrinth of traffic.
Virginia Woolf writes, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I had money and now I have a room of my own, so I decided to write today after getting off from work. I took the last bus from the bus stand and reached home. Unfortunately, my two little children were not asleep. It would have been better if they were sleeping already. Honestly, they tire me sometimes. After dining when the house was wrapped in the blanket of darkness, I was sitting in my room, slightly lit with a lamp and with my laptop. I wanted to write. I wanted to write how I felt at that very moment, I wanted to sketch the waves in the ocean into words before they died at the shore but I could not. I was worried that the sound of my fingers striking the keys of the laptop would wake up the people who were already sleeping. I hated being questioned. I felt trapped in my own house, in my own room for which I had dreamt when I was in middle school. Perhaps this was not that room.
It was that day when I decided to rent a room for myself. I rented Room number 17, which was around 18-20 kilometers away from the place where I lived with my husband. So, here I am now with the walls full of black and white sketches, imperfect, perhaps meaningless paintings, quotes from my favorite writers and albums of my favorite artists. I was not trapped anywhere, there were no mirrors in the room but I could feel that it was me who was sitting in the room with just one lamp hardly lighting up the room. I felt more comfortable in the darkness. I felt liberated here. Perhaps, I can say that I felt alive. I will never invite someone in my Room number 17, not even my husband. The existence of this room depends on its secrecy. Once someone discovers it, the windows of the room will shatter into tiny pieces, the floor will break into fragments, the walls will crumble down and the ceiling will fall on my head and it will kill me. This room will no longer be my Room number 17.
THANK YOU.