'A Writer’s Space'

You could have been just like everyone else. Another face lost in a sea of people pushing and pulling against each other, their skin torrents of sweat in the damp summer air of this country. And like them, you wear your trusty shoes, comfortable to march and skip and walk in, despite their thinning soles and the dirt and scrapes that never come out even with the roughest of scrubbing with the toughest of bleach and soap.

The way home is through the inescapable journey alongside hundreds of people waiting for life to happen, instead of the monotonous drone that urges them to think of survival instead. Your hands are dry and itchy, with the smell of metal and ink that never washes off. As you hold onto the metal railings of whatever boat you take down this imitation of the great river of broken promises, abandoned dreams, and half-hearted hope, you know that you are your own fare man. And what other payment can you offer, other than the breath of life that once twinkled in your eye? A few coins here, and some bills there, and yet these can never amount to the greatest cost you had to pay, and are still paying, to escape this underworld.

Still, the boat pushes off its mooring. You stand, feet shoulder length apart, letting your body sway and bob with the tides. Though this country is nestled in the embrace of the Eastern sun, the souls around you cast shadows that push iciness into your lungs. You could have been just like them…except that they have a destination at the end of this cruise down the Styx.

You don’t.

While they hack away at stones to find the light, you pass one end and emerge from the other, with no hope for an end.

Still, you board this journey each day, hoping that this time will be different. But it is not, and will not be. A loop. A circle. A never-ending cycle. And isn’t that a gift, that there is no home you have to part with, no roots to painfully tear out from the earth, no future, no past, no present? Or is it yet another curse, another thing written down in the list of all debts you have to pay?

You arrive at what seems to be your destination. And though the door that greets you is different, and has had many faces throughout the years, they remain smiling and weeping at the sight of your weary sloped shoulders and your aching feet. Another reminder of the double-edged sword that is remembering. Yet you push the key in. You know that you will be back where you started. The door seems to mock you as it creaks open, with the hinges trilling in laughter doubled over with gasping sobs.

You arrived at this door an infinitely old creature, broken down by countless journeys in an attempt to find home. But when you finally enter, the stone floor seems to disappear under your feet. Your age fades away until you have supple cheeks once more. You reach out an arm to turn on the lights, but the light switch crawls higher and higher and higher. Or perhaps you have shrunk. The ceiling is a thousand feet high, and you are but a tiny speck in this space.

You shrug off your bag, which used to bear the rouge of apples freshly plucked, of warm blood running through veins, and of pain and desire. And when it hits the ground, it transforms, shrinking like you did, and the colour bleeds away, paler and paler. Now it is a sickly pink, reminding you of cotton candy that sits heavily in the stomach, of cheeks flushed with sickness that eats away at scarlet life underneath.

You remove your shoes, and once they are free from the shackles of your tired feet, they transform. Little ballerina slippers never worn. You take off your shirt, you peel off your pants as you walk further into the space. Suddenly you are in a slip of a frock, hardly above your knees, too tight on your now flat body. A dress struggling to keep up with a child’s rapidly growing body. You wipe away your lady’s makeup, and discover watercolour smudges and marker stains on your face. As you walk further in, the table rises until it is standing up to below your chin, and your old raggedy stuffed bear has grown fur in places where there used to be empty patches. The tiles can now fit both your feet in, with plenty of space to spare. A television drones with static, and shadows move across the walls. A figure long gone appears, making coffee, cooking food to be covered for later, giving a ghost of a kiss on your forehead that says as it rushes out the door, “I’ll see you later. Don’t wait up for me.”

Yes. You are back where you started.

In this space where you had expected an altar to judge you before you move on, there is instead your childhood prison. The cold plastic seat at the table waits invitingly. The mattress on the floor is made and ready to cocoon you with threadbare blankets and half-fluffed pillows.

Still, you choose the nest where not even the cats will stay. You choose the tiny hole where not even the cockroaches will make their bed, where your dolls will never play in. It is in the very corner, behind some boxes and next to a plastic cabinet, hot against the warm air that blows from the back of the television. You used to hide there when there was a lot of screaming and flying plates and glasses. You used to sleep here when you were alone, waiting for someone to save you. So now, you go back to it, and you tuck yourself in. Head on your knees, arms around your legs, you go back to this spot where you escaped a prison dressed in childhood nostalgia. You drift off to an uneasy slumber, drowning in your loneliness, in your emptiness, in your unwantedness.

But this unassuming hole, not much to see, is the place where you become light as air. You are no longer the shackle around her ankles. Where you used to be a victim, a burden, you are now your own hero and your own god. You transport to the great beyond, and you pretend you are back in the womb, or you are where you were before your father’s angry seed forced you into your mother’s aching heart. In this space, in this hole, you get to observe and create the universe instead of being a useless insignificant speck.

Within this blackness, your hands ooze rainbows, and your voice rings with the power that God used to create. “Let there be light," God had said, but in your space, you think of something infinitely better. “Let there be…” you say, and there shall be indeed. You dance in this weightlessness, a mermaid amongst the cosmos. You weave threads of magic until they become millions of tapestries where you are the muse, the poet, the letter, and the pen. In this space, she is happier, a carefree girl instead of a hardened woman. In this space, he will never have to pretend that you exist as a reminder of his mistakes. In this space, you will never have to travel the River Styx, in search of a home that will never be yours, was never yours to ask in the first place.

But the gods are cruel with their punishment. The spell breaks, and you wake up outside the door you stepped in, crying with snot running down your nose. You are not beautiful. You are not graceful and agile and wonderful. You taste saltiness where there was once the kiss of sugar. You feel helplessness where there was once the power that allowed you to create worlds of your own. You remember the half-finished studio of your childhood instead of the castle you dreamt of. There is the sound of a bell ringing behind you, and you turn to see the boat again, calling for passengers for the next journey. The door has disappeared. You have no choice but to take the boat again, giving more and more of your life and hope as payment. All of this just so you could go back to that little space, or perhaps the hope that this time, the journey will actually end.

As the boat pushes off its mooring, your hands dry and itchy on the metal railings, your feet shoulder length apart, you think. You realise you are simply someone who is loved not because you are good and loveable, but because the people in your life are just the type of people who will love you with all the goodness in their hearts. You will be loved even if you are the very knife that twists in their gut. Even if you are the shard that blinds their eye. You tell them, “I wish you never took me home,” and they will say, “Nonsense, I will always take you with me.” But they will only mean it until the life bleeds out of them. They will realise the curse that you are. They will know that you will be passed onto another poor unsuspecting soul who has too much love to give to someone who should not receive.

So is it at all surprising that though you reach the door and it has changed, you still end up in that little hole, creating universes in your head that will never be? Is it at all surprising that your attempts to recreate that wonderful space turn into lifeless miserable inkblots instead of the kaleidoscope of colour and magic it once was? Is it at all surprising that no matter how many times you travel, sail, swim across the river, you end up back at the bank where you boarded the boat, where you jumped in its current? Though the souls around you change, though the Eastern sun rises and sets, you will never escape this infinite circular space where you will never learn your lesson. Where they will never learn their lesson.

What choice is there but to pretend? To pretend that you are God, that you’re someone worth listening to?

None.