Describe home.

Sometimes the most complicated answers come from the most simple of questions.  I imagine myself sitting in a fourth grade class; fourth grade was a good year.  I think I really started understanding books when I was in fourth grade. I didn’t appreciate them until much later in life.  Maybe I was looking out a window, or thinking about the play rehearsal I probably had after school, but I wouldn’t have been thrown with a simple assignment such as an essay asking to describe home. 

If asked to accomplish the same assignment today, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.  My version of home has changed so many times throughout the last few years, and for the longest time I couldn’t even bring myself to acknowledge that the home I knew would never be again.  Like so many times before, and so many times to come, I got caught up in a material meaning of and forgot that home is where the heart is. 

I will never forget the feeling I had the day the abandoned sign was finally posted on the basement door.  We had made a relatively mutual decision not to care about the house, I suppose. We all acted in our own little ways like we were trying, or would try, to salvage what was left of the house.  I still, wish I would have been more proactive as far as emptying the house of possessions, but in reality, none of us tried very hard. 

That’s the thing about sentimental objects; you can only have so many. I treasure everything that reminds me of mom, but I can only have so many of those objects.  I have had to work excruciatingly hard to adjust and honestly I couldn’t have a full room of my past reminding me of her, of my mom.   I still choke up just saying the word.

Mom.

It makes my muscles tense. People constantly flatter me, complimenting me on my ability to turn a situation, to find the good in the bad.  I suppose I figure if I’m crying I might as well do it with a smile.  I accept situations for what they are; you have to change, if you can’t change the situation.  I can deal with situations. I take a situation, assess it with my heart, and take action accordingly. Words are elegant weapons, Words I can’t even bring myself to speak.

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

My heart weeps.  In my darkest moments I can’t contain the small sobs that escape its chambers.  

I don’t ignore it anymore; I let it weep.  I still use it sometimes as white noise, it’s evolved from a sound I feared to a sound I use to lull myself to sleep, the most prominent evidence that even in death, she remains a consistent and necessary part of my life. 

I’m writing this because of my recent dream.

I mostly remember that Troy and I were at the house.  It was clean and the doors from the bathroom into the master bedroom were open.  It was as if I had seen those sea green walls yesterday.  There were other people walking around too, probably Heather and Ryan.  I opened the door to the basement to find that the stairs were completely missing.  You literally couldn’t even get to the basement.  No one else seemed to notice. 

I couldn’t stop staring at the rats.   There were rats scurrying around a pile of dead rats.  It was disgusting.  It was as if someone had quarantined this part of the house in order to prevent further infection. 

Over a long period of time, I have done the same with certain emotions and memories, which remain well kept in vast vaults hidden within the mazes of my mind. It isn't that I want them gone, I selfishly keep them locked so far away until both my sanity and my memories can live in a civil alliance....and I'm getting there...slowly, but surely.