Windows Of My Life

It was the first place I could call my own. My whole life I'd been sharing a bedroom with at least one of three brothers. When I was 15 years old I finally got the smallest bedroom in the house as my own.

Window 1 - 2016

The kid had shared the room before--once with one brother and once with three of them. But this time something was different when he walked through the door inside. This time the look on his face was saying it's mine.

And he made it his. All the other walls in the house were white. The boy painted his a vibrant blue.

He kept his things tidy without ever being asked. The kid was creative and spent hours making art. Some days he would paint. Some days he would draw. Some days he would cut intricate designs from paper.

But most of the time, the boy would be writing. In his free time, hours were spent pecking away on an old laptop. The pages started adding up, from tens to hundreds. Even though his parents made him go to bed at ten o'clock, the boy would often sneak up, retrieve the laptop, and write late into the night. It was his passion, what defined him. Old drawn maps of his imaginary world lay on the bookcase shelves, paintings for his book covers were carefully treasured in the desk, and notebooks full of handwritten notes lay everywhere.

When I was 16, my father made me work at a carpentry place. For a year I worked hard even in tortuous heat and brutal cold. It was the worst year of my life, when I felt like no one cared about me.

Window 2 - 2017

The creativity never seemed to end for the boy. He never stopped writing, but as the year passed much changed. One day he left in the morning, leaving the maps and notebooks behind. He returned that night covered in sawdust, looking exhausted.

He left again the next day, and the day after that. Each day of working in the roasting summer sun seemed to sink his joyful spirit deeper inside. The room became less of a place to indulge in creative pursuits and more of a refuge from the exhaustion of whatever he did all day.

The boy's normally smiling face was now more often pasted with a weary expression. He spent hardly any time writing anymore. His little time at home was filled with loneliness and dread. Loneliness, because he realized that some relationships--no matter how close to begin with--don't work. Loneliness, because he felt like no one cared about what he felt. And dread, because the next day it would all start over again.

Sometimes he'd just sit on the bed, doing nothing. He simply sat, watching the dying of the light through the window and feeling the same inside.

My 18th birthday marked the end of the torturous year of labor, as well as the beginning of something new. I left home to live at college.

Window 3 - 2018

The boy finally came home and stayed for a month. He was a lot happier. He was hopeful, and confident, and relieved. Hopeful for the future, confident of success, and relieved that his darkest time was past.

One day he started packing excitedly. He stuffed clothes, books, and all sorts of other belongings into three big suitcases. And then he left.

The room was dark and quiet for months, but it was a peaceful absence of life, certain of the promise of return. And return the boy did, once for the merry season of Christmas and again for summer. He had changed some, but much was still the same.

He still wrote with a passion, churning out page after page. Even though his family raged and fought all around him, he remained a stable beacon of strength who his mother seemed to draw strength from. He didn't talk as much as he used to, but he was always smiling and his bright spirit stayed the same.

In 2019, I got my first job working at a library. It began a time when I had to begin paying for college on my own.

Window 4 - 2019

The boy started leaving in the mornings again to return at night. But this time it was different. This time it was by choice, and he seemed to be happy with how he managed.

It was hard for him, though. He had to get up early and dress formally and he came back only in the evenings. It was a time where he was tired, but not from being worn down in every way. This time he had support with what he did, and it was his choice.

Eventually the time came around for the boy to pack things up again at the end of the summer. He was excited again, for he loved anything new he could ever experience.

In 2020, I packed to leave with my mom and brother, to make a new home in the city where my college is.

Window 5 - 2020

This time, when the boy came home, something was different.

He was tired from his most difficult year at college so far, but he emerged with flying colors. But that wasn't surprising.

He had decided to stop talking to his dad at all. He realized that it was better to have no communication from him rather than purely negative communication. But that had built up from the year when his dad made him work with no reward.

He had been laid off from his job due to a pandemic. While that was a big change, it wasn't the focus of coming home.

He had begun focusing what he did creatively by designing art and writing online, but that was to be expected from years of making things.

The boy began packing his boxes. Not his suitcases which he took to college. Not his backpack for college textbooks. He packed everything. He took the intricate crafts from the walls, cleared the desk from its in-progress projects.

He was leaving.

For good.

The boy had come into the room with the window five years before as a bright personality, as a creative mind, as a soul who loved colors. Through the old panes of glass, the boy's life had gone through dark times and challenging times. Times of sadness and anger and loneliness. Times of creativity and excitement and happiness. They boy had spent half a decade in the room. While the view outside stayed the same, what happened within grew and matured.

The boy had grown up.

As I write this, the walls of my room are bare, the bookcase is cleared of its volumes, and my desk surface is empty for the first time since I've had it.

My window has seen me grow up. It saw me at my best and my worst. It saw me when I was loneliest and most vulnerable. It saw me in my moments of success and triumph.

For some people, a room is just a place to live. For me, my room was a part of my life. This written work was a view of me from the opposite direction people usually look out a window.

You've seen through the windows of my life.