Internal Dominance

Following is a short story I wrote in college...




     As I sit in this house I couldn’t help but to notice silence, tranquility, and peace. It made me uneasy. I shuffled around corners looking for something, something that could entertain, and nothing. My room was dark, I was nearly deathly afraid of the dark­—what was I doing here? All I had was a bed; I didn’t like to keep things that entertain me in my room because a bedroom is for sleeping. I opened the blinds and a burst of sunlight came in and I looked at the front lawn.

     Our lawn was sloped to such a degree you could roll a ball down it and you could watch it roll to the other side of town. The houses exterior is full of tans and whites—a shimmering building on top of a mountain. I looked away from the window and I decided to leave.

     I continued from my room to the one across the narrow hall. It was darker than the one I was confined in, quieter than the one from before. Desk, computer, television, assortments of books, this is where I put my objects for entertainment and then I heard voices. I followed the sound approaching my room again then taking a right before I entered my room. This was the living room, but for being how quiet it was it felt like a room for the dead.

     Ten foot high ceilings, extensive windows, I felt like I was in a cathedral. I took a right staying adjacent to the wall to reach the next corner in the room; this was where the fireplace was. I looked at the fireplace, a granite and wood mantle with a rope design—this was a well-crafted work. I dreamed of days when it was on and it would heat the whole house, snow was on the ground and everyone was “in the spirit”. I loved days like that, white reminded me of pure and clean, isn’t that what everyone wants to be? Every person either religious or atheist, emotional or numb, people still have a craving to be pure or their sense of clean. I feel clean, or even pure doesn’t have a concrete definition though it is commonly known as good. I continued to stare at the fireplace and I couldn’t help but to think, “am I this envisioned clean that has been created by society?”—I shivered. I hoped that someday I could sit by this fire again; I just didn’t have the patience to wait.

     I heard the talking again and I turned around to see the kitchen I walked forward and I looked to the right to see outside the windows. Green and red, my parent’s garden. My mom loves roses; so much she devoted our backyard to it. Red, red-yellow, yellow, yellow-white, white-red a cornucopia of various colours of roses. My mom was a florist before she lost her vision, but because she lost her vision doesn’t mean that she still doesn’t love flowers but she always loved roses.

     When I was young my mom lost her vision due to a blood clot in her brain, she was misdiagnosed, doctors say it was her fault. They say it was because she wasn’t taking her medication when she had a stroke, but in all reality they prescribed the wrong dosage. A year after my mom’s vision went from failing to inexistent, she has accepted the disadvantage and embraced it with open arms. She hasn’t changed since then. She still loves the things she used to though she cannot see them. Reading books turned to listening to audiotapes and cooking turned to being cooked for. This helped me to mature faster, and if it weren’t for that I wouldn’t be here this day.

     I continued to the kitchen and I passed the arch that separated the two rooms. The ceilings were taller than before and the light was positioned just right that it looked like the moon was only twelve feet away from me. Cabinets touch every wall and they nearly touch the moon. I stand there in awe for a few minutes trying to listen for the sound, further into the kitchen is my parents bedroom door. It wasn’t coming from here.

     I moved forward to leave the kitchen passing my parents door into another hallway. I took a left to approach a long dark hallway to see the door to the basement. If the upstairs would drive me crazy then the downstairs would make me clinically insane. I looked down the staircase and I realized this place can change my life, and so it did.

     Depression is a mental disorder that gives low self-esteem, lowered mood, loss of interest and affected sleeping habits. When in a depressed episode the individual will experience helplessness, insomnia, hallucinations and thoughts of death and/or suicide. Depression is natural in my family and has been passed on from generation to generation-through genetics; it was now my turn to carry the curse. The first signs of depression presented themselves when I turned fifteen, along with insomnia and a mild case of schizophrenia

     Several years later I lived in that exact same house but the house only had a few changes, but the house seemed less like a house and more like a home. I grew to love the quiet, and soon enough I moved down into the very basement I feared. The basement was laid out just like the upper floors but even less sunlight and smaller ceilings. The confined space felt soothing, quiet seemed to be my relaxer, my therapist.

     It was now winter and by this time I realized that things weren’t quite what they used to be. I viewed everything different now up was now down, the little child that annoyed you every minute was now a keep to yourself, quiet individual. I breathed in the warm air coming from the vents, I will never step outside when there is snow unless if I have to. I viewed white differently now. It felt disgusting; it felt like the very tomb I once lived in. I wanted to leave that colour behind me. I was pure, I felt clean few years prior but now I didn’t, did this curse make me feel this way? I didn’t care. I look at everyone in the world, trying to fit in, do all they can do to be accepted and I felt like the only one that was accepted but not at the same time. I felt perfect but flawed, I now knew I lived in an odd world, and I was one of its odd members.

     I left to the upstairs and not a single wall is white now, browns and greens now filled the halls. I walk back into the kitchen and realized what I once was, and how much I wanted to be that way again, but I now enjoyed the new me, —“Is that ignorance? Or is it Acceptance?” I thought. Right I looked outside I felt nauseous. Just a little bit of light meant a lot to me, the natural body needs sunlight to live. I needed sunlight to live especially with depression; I found that I was just like a natural man. This home is beautiful, and it will always remain a home to me.

Remember me