The New Yellow Wallpaper

We drove up the snowy, winding road towards the cozy A-frame cabin. My lover knows me so well. He accounted for my love of seclusion, literature and nature.

I needed this trip. We needed this trip. Recent changes took us galaxies from of our comfort zones in every respect. It wasn’t my hometown of Tacoma. But it was Washington State, Skykomish, and not DC.

My lover knows me so well. He got the nature and seclusion right. So why does the limitlessness make me feel uptight?

The tunnel of evergreens leading to Tye Haus are closing in. Once vast and profuse, the light at the end is barely visible at this point. The long stretch to relaxation is the circumference of the earth laid flat.

My lover knows me so well. He often intuits my thoughts. I must mind them, lest he sense my restlessness.

I found reassurance for the rest of the journey up the gravel track steeped in powdery snowflakes above an icy core. My confidence came from the superb all-wheel drive of the lifted station wagon.

My lover knows me so well. He made sure to rent an Outback instead of a 300 Series.

The higher we climbed, the more the stone path resembled a driveway. What was once nature’s bounty is presently hallowed ground beaten into modern submission. I shivered a little at the thought.

My lover knows me so well. He figured the slight increase in altitude made me chilly. So he turned up the heat a few degrees.

The car’s display calculated three minutes away from bliss. I could see the peak of the “A” stretching forth her neck in eagerness to make sure I was still coming.

“Yes. I’m here. We will soon be enveloped in each other’s warmth”, I wanted to coo from the car. She and I were fond of verbal love overtures.

My lover knows so much about me. Yet he does not know this scenery is antiquity. That there are things committed to my eyes that he cannot see.

“Come on, my dear. Let’s get you inside.” Nothing but pride radiated from his eyes.

Lunging through the threshold, I couldn’t wait to twirl about. But I was stopped in my tracks by the most frightful sight. While charming, there was nothing cozy about this abode at all. It was public like a frog.

My lover knew me so well. So why didn’t he warn me? Oh, wait. He couldn’t. I hid that part of my history.

Instead of the William Faulkner theme I loved so much, there was this bold, beautiful and intrusive yellow stuff. We stared each other up and down. It was all too familiar somehow. The 1,100 square-foot paradise catered for rest transformed into a glamping prison of acrid canary wallpaper crests.

“Come, my love, and sit down. I will get some food from town.”

Three blue couches, the small flatscreen television, and crackling centralized fireplace were all the same. However, this new yellow wallpaper evoked a post-traumatic something. Robert Frost would say that a demise in ice would be nice. My mind desired fire: the hot tub or the fireplace would suffice.

Sit? Sit? I wanted to flee out the door quoting with streaming black tresses, “Nevermore!”

My lover used to know me so well. So why is he leaving me in this encampment of hell?

I finally had time to escape to a room of one’s own. Only to come across more self-loathing and a fate I bemoaned.

My lover used to know so much. Yet he does not know why I am flummoxed. The lineage of my name came from the very author currently extolled in this room.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman suffered a breakdown after giving birth. Her husband thought she needed rest too. So he shuffled her off to an estate with a yellow wallpapered room. She had a daughter, you see. And she was named Katherine, just like me.