racing stripes

This is a prompt from my writer’s group; we were asked to describe our teenage bedroom ♥️

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I was 17 back then, i can’t even believe i was once 17. My bedroom on Flower Street was one of the first things i felt true ownership of. I think it’s because i was given free rein to paint the walls. I could choose any color i wanted, the only condition was that i had to do the painting myself. Do you guys remember those Hollister hoodies, the thick, soft fabric. HCO on the front? I had one in teal blue, the prettiest, brightest blue.

My parents took me to Walmart to color-match the paint to that hoodie. I think they used a scanner that detected the color and then shot out a hex code, but I could be remembering that wrong. I chose that teal blue and two cherry red racing stripes along the main wall - cause, why? I don’t know. I painted for days — only in the thick of it did i realize how hard of a job it was.

That room was my haven and hell. Lots of posters that scream youth, like black and white snapshots of Bob Dylan, my old Little Mermaid poster from early childhood, and a peeling photo of Janis Joplin topless from Hippie Gypsy on Mill. I didn’t have a bed frame (I didn’t get one for another thirteen years). Just a mattress on the floor in front of the big window, overlooking the road that was always active but in a quiet, humming way. white noise.

There was a big tree in view; it would sway beautifully during monsoon season - when I’d open my window and dream of a life outside that bedroom: one full of adulthood and drinking and badness. I was only in that room for two years, then off to college before a brief return when I was 20 when everything fell apart in my new life up north amongst the pines.

But there, to that room, is where I’d return. To dream and cry, hide weed in the closet, and the vodka bottle my dad got me for my 21st. To watch Pretty Little Liars by Christmas light or fall into bed drunk on my mom’s birthday (the night Obama got elected) after we’d gone to the bars to celebrate.

— M