Rooms are sort of a sanctuary---
especially for a teenager,
a place to build your own world
even though you feel sort of stuck there.

I took down everything in my room
before I left for college 4 years ago
and now it’s not so much my room
but a room that I stay in sometimes.

There are still remnants of clear tape
that held up posters and photos
and other teenage memorabilia
I surrounded myself with.

When things got boring or lonely
it meant sneaking out of the house
to wander around the neighborhood
with friends or headphones
and then eventually back in my bed
staring up at the stringy lights on my ceiling.

The time I snuck out and smoked my first joint
I didn’t know whether to cry or to laugh
at the fact that I could almost see
the community center I took swim lessons at as a kid
just beyond the end of the lighter.

I think I needed someone to talk to because things got bad,
but all of my feelings and energy went into obsessively building
a world for myself that I could survive in
despite the fact that it was hurting me.

I rearranged my reality into something bearable
but destructive at the same time,
because the only freedom I felt like I had then
was choosing what I wanted to see.

I felt closer to these things than anything in my life;
it was a world made up of memories with friends,
hours and hours of music,
and following some sort of fandom.

Leaving it all behind was like
killing a part of myself that helped me keep going.

Somewhere down that road
I realized that happiness was a choice,
even though my world made of things I depended on
was gone and my problems were still there.

I’m building a different world for myself elsewhere now
but sometimes I end up back in this room
and it feels a little empty
but also the right kind of nostalgic.