By: Sipora West

Disclaimer: The names of my father’s ex-partner and her son have been changed for privacy purposes. 

The cedar-coloured bed belongs against the northern wall. The bed is low, so a strip of white paint is visible between the bamboo mattress and the double windows. Upon examination, one may notice tiny pinpricks dotting the wall, proof of nails once wedged there. Now, other items adorn the wall: a ticket stub reading Cabaret: 50th Anniversary, rumpled from its time squished between a ninth grade student ID and an expired health card. Next to it sit two pages ripped from a school production’s programme, hot pink hearts encircling the title and description of a spoken word piece called Manic Pixie Dream Girl Says. Last, a postcard. Purchased at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, depicting an image of Roy Lichtenstein’s I’m Sorry: an oil painting of a blonde haired, red-lipped Eve crying one crystal tear, leaving the nature of her apology up for interpretation. 

Every single item in my bedroom has a story. The broken tree earrings that lay on the pink base of my jewellery organiser were last worn during winter break of 2019. I donned them with a green dress over a white turtleneck while my cousins were visiting from Pittsburgh and we made TikToks to Sugar by Brockhampton. The Betty and Veronica double digest, stacked neatly in a pile with other Archie comics on the third rung of my wooden ladder shelf, which had been carried back and forth between Toronto and Haliburton four summers in a row. I read it over and over again under the buttery yellow of my flashlight, careful not to disturb the seven other girls sleeping in our dank cabin. The Harry Styles record, standing between vinyls of Rubber Soul and Ladies of the Canyon on the bottom row of that ladder shelf, is a gift a ninth grade fling gave me at my fifteenth birthday party, where we dressed up in 80s clothes and watched Dirty Dancing.

Whenever the seasons change, or I fall out with friends, or I receive a bad grade, my bedroom stays consistent. Whenever my brother is particularly sick, or my ambitions appear pointless, or my heart aches like a stone in my chest, my bedroom stays consistent. It is a haven of all that I care about, all that I am interested in, and all that I am. When in a depressive episode, I glide my fingers along the spines of books, books that I bought with money earned from sweeping popcorn off movie theatre floors and urging little kids to reapply their sunscreen. 

My bedroom is a carefully cultivated sanctuary, holding every bit of information that is worth knowing about me. It holds my fifth grade diary where I recorded my first crush feelings, the Movieland magazine with Debbie Reynolds on the cover that I bought from an antique shop while listening to a film history podcast, and my Rebel Without A Cause DVD that was gifted to me during the first Christmas I spent with my dad’s new family.

I am someone who is prone to feeling lost and lonely. Someone who wonders whether I have any authentic identity of my own or if I am just trudging through life the way others expect me to. My bedroom reminds me of the magical moments in this mundane life; my Hadestown playbill a reminder of all the musicals I have yet to see, my map of the Met a reminder of all the art I have yet to absorb, and my torn up pages of Little Women that decorate my bookshelf a reminder of the crafts I have yet to create. My bedroom grounds me, surrounding me with stories, inundating me with the things I love. It lends me refuge while the rest of my life is frenzied and uncontrollable.

Behind my bed, on the east side of my room, homemade movie posters hang in rows. Some patches of bare wall appear where they shouldn’t, their blankness sticking out like weeds in a bed of roses. I am still decorating, still finding new favourite movies and creating polaroid posters of them to hang up. 

But, my bedroom is not mine to decorate anymore. In the span of 48 hours, it went from my oasis to an abyss I was trespassing on. I have had the rug pulled from under me many times, but this time, when my father told me he was splitting from his partner and we were to move out in only two days, the entire floor collapsed in. How could everything that made me me get taken down so quickly? How could all of my experiences, all of my little heartbreaks and grand triumphs, get stowed into a few cardboard boxes? How could it all happen so suddenly? My walnut-colored knitted blanket disappeared into a box before I could sleep with it one last time. My walls, once canvases for me to cover with Daisy Buchanan quotes written in vampire red lipstick, and thrifted picture frames encasing stills from the I Want Candy scene in Marie Antoinette are now just walls. Walls that are empty; visions of a completed personal oasis driven away with the U-Haul truck. The programme from my most recent school production, the programme I was going to hang on my wall next, exists somewhere on the path between my father’s old life to my father’s new life.

I never got to finish decorating my walls. I never got to give Michelle the Renaissance-painting-printed socks that are still sitting in my Etsy cart. I never got to take a final bite of Michelle’s lavish Sunday brunch. I never got to take Tristan to a movie on my Cineplex Cast Pass. I bought a book at Indigo the other day and while waiting to pay, I sifted through the bins of trinkets located by the checkout line. There was a talking keychain, one of those toys that you press buttons on and different sounds play from the toy’s grainy speaker. This one was The Office themed, and my friend pressed the buttons, playing Michael Scott’s famous that’s what she said line over and over and over again.

“This would be the perfect gift for-” 

I faltered. I was about to say it would be the perfect gift for Tristan. Was I supposed to buy Tristan gifts anymore? What is the protocol for splits from step-families?

I never even got to say goodbye. In the span of 48 hours, I lost my house, my basement space perfect for parties, my second brother, my second mother, my stability, and my bedroom. I lost my bedroom, that I had curated with the precision of a graduate art history student organising their first exhibition. I lost my bedroom, which was a concrete representation of my unique existence.

I lost it all, before I even got to finish decorating my walls.