by keisi j

Created on: July 01, 2008   Last Updated: March 12, 2010

My room was pink like bubblegum, the walls and the carpet. A magical blue fairy hung beside the big white door. Two large windows opened the long wall opposite the entrance. My childhood bedroom was magical to me. The most amazing thing about my room was that it took me to another place. I didn't have a tragic life, but my family was sad. My father was ill psychologically but refused treatment and counseling of any kind. My pink happy bedroom was a soft and precious place to be. I gazed at that blue fairy and found hope. Someday, I told my self, I would leave this place and be the princess I was born to be.

Years passed and I continued to escape into my room every day after school, after dinner and before bed. I escaped my siblings' torment and some of dad's abuse. Sprawled out on the floor writing simple rhymes and reading children's books, I pretended I to be a pretty princess in my room, locked up and waiting for my prince to rescue me.

As the years went by, I grew impatient for him. My frustration hit high peaks and sometimes I kicked holes in my pretty pink walls. I smoked cigarettes by the window, burned my skin with red-hot earrings and drank into oblivion, just waiting. My grandma died when I was 10.  I sprawled out on the floor again and cried. It wasn't fair. It wasn't the fairytale I thought I was living. It frightened me that everything I thought was true had just become a monster that I couldn't understand. My grandma was the one who cared about me. I prayed for help and felt a pause in my distress, calm hit me like a truck just for a moment. I remember that I chose to keep on crying. I didn't know then what that choice meant, but five years later, still home crying, I realized that was an exit. Five years later, still crying, fighting pain, I resolved to wish the world would simply put me down to sleep.

Then one day I got home from school and my belongings were piled in another room. I was confused and so I asked my sister what was happening. She told that she was moving into my room. My anger rose up and I fought the decision uselessly. No one stood beside me. I was uprooted like a seedling weed.

The feelings of disrespect that rose up in me broke my little heart. It wasn't that I loved the room but just that it was all I had. My room was my escape from all my pain. They moved my things into my little sister's room and hell began again. I felt I had nowhere to go and nobody cared.  The pestering little child took seemed to find joy in taunting me. My childhood bedroom was my safety and it was ripped out from under me.

The walls and carpet were bubblegum pink and I hated pink but that room was my safety. They moved me and then daddy started sneaking in in the evening. My mom only came in if I woke up screaming. She gave me medicine and rocked me to sleep. The walls and carpet were Bubblegum pink. My childhood bedroom brings back so many memories.

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