The Rooms Inside Me

There's a room inside me that burns so loud It presses against my ribs until I can't hold it anymore I try to contain it I really do but sometimes it spills through my mouth through my hands through everything I swore I'd never break again I yell I throw I shatter and then I stare at what's left like a stranger in my own skin I hate this part of me the part that moves too fast that explodes before I even know why that leaves me aching and ashamed in the silence that follows I know this room inside me wasn't built from scratch It was passed down like a family heirloom no one wanted with the same rage I saw in my father's eyes and heard in his voice I sweep up the glass but some of it stays buried in the floor some of it stays buried in me I wonder if I've turned into what I've always feared Because I'm not just the one who breaks things anymore I am the glass now too sharp too dangerous to hold.

It's the smallest room in the house, but it feels endless. No windows. The lightbulb flickers just enough to catch the dust spinning in the air dust that never settles, just circles and circles, like the same fight replaying on loop. The floor is cluttered with unfinished sentences, my words split in half, trampled under your voice. Every corner smells faintly of smoke not the warm kind from a fireplace but the kind that curls from the end of a joint while you swing back watching time burn away. On the wall there's a mirror that doesn't look like me. It shows the villain you've painted sharp edges, accusing eyes the character you've written so you don't have to see your own reflection. You tell me I always argue, but you never let me finish a sentence. You don't take your part of the wreckage, just hand me the whole pile, and then vanish into the haze. The strangest thing? Sometimes you open the door later, as if nothing was broken here, as if your words didn't smash my bones, as if I should just be grateful I'm still standing and call it love. In this room, confusion drips from the ceiling. Shame hangs heavy in the air, Pushing on my shoulders like dust I can't brush off. I am just a shape in the corner, fading at the edges. And still, the moment the blue app beeps, my body locks up like it's bracing for a storm I can't see yet. Every muscle tight, heartbeat trapped in my throat. And somewhere, way down in the quiet, a voice I barely recognize says, You don't have to stay in here.

I lost half the world when we split and the rest when my vision blurred right eye fading like a light at the end of something I didn't choose to end. They said it was from the stress. From the sugar in my blood, the pressure, the pushing, the way I lock things down so hard it starts leaking out of my eyes. They didn't know if the shots would work. Said maybe. Said possibly. Said "try not to stress," as if that wasn't the thing clawing at my chest, pressing against my eyelids every single day. Try not to stress, when the damage lives behind your face. When even blinking reminds you you're broken. I wore a patch like a pirate but there was no ship, just waiting rooms and a pen holder filled with syringes that haunt me. Every one of them a maybe. A maybe-it-works. A maybe-it-doesn't. A maybe-you-see-again. A maybe-you-don't. Even when I close my eyes, there's no escape. I see it: the black blood swirling like ink dropped in water. Had it been art, I might have loved it. But it's mine. It's inside me. A reminder of what I could lose at any moment. The left eye started to fade. Now it's shots again. Surgery…scheduled. I hold back tears before the needle even touches me. My body already knows what's coming. The sound afterward sends chills down my back like glass settling after it's shattered. And still, I have to work. Still have to fold clothes, smile, send texts, act like I'm okay when I'm unraveling in a slow, blinking rhythm. It's not that I'm tired. I just woke up. This is different this is soul-tired. The kind of tired that lives in your bones and pretends it's just "a long day." The kind that makes you quiet so people don't ask questions you're too exhausted to answer. I don't know what scares me more Losing my sight or being this invisible while I still can see. I'm not looking for a pep talk. Not comfort. Not even understanding. I just want it said truthfully. This is what it is. And I'm still standing. Not because I'm okay. Not because I'm brave. But because life keeps moving and so do I eyes open, even when it's blurry.

This is the room where I go when holding it together is the only option anyone expects from me. I cry in fragments on the way to work, in the car, with the music loud enough to cover what's breaking. I cry in my office, door shut, behind emails and meetings and the hum of fake stability. I cry in the bathroom not loudly, never loudly just enough to pass as splashing water on my face or drying my hands too long. I cry in the shower, forehead pressed to tile, where no one can hear me over the water tears carried away like they never existed. I cry in the pool, Tanning on the side as the kids play behind my sunglasses, head tipped to the sky like I'm just soaking in sun, not drowning slowly. I blame my face on my bad eye It's always red. It's just irritated today. But it's not just my eye. It's the ache behind it. This is how I let it out in seconds, in silence, in places no one thinks to look. I mop it up before anyone sees, fix my voice, dry my face. Some days, I don't hide it. Some days, the weight sits visible on my face, in my body, in the way I go quiet. You assume I'm fine as long as I'm not salty, not snapping, not making waves. I guess everyone's scared of me. Like I'm some kind of monster. But I'm not. I'm like Olaf Big presence, sure, but afraid of loud noises, sudden change, water, being left behind. Not scary. Just tired. Just trying. But she knows. She always knows. Even when I smile, even through a screen she talks to me on FaceTime with eyes too wise for her years.

Barefoot, but never in grass. Eww. I like glitter. And spilled paint. Messy counters and loud music. Give me mess that means something. In glitter, in paint, in the chaos of joy. Joy that leaves sparkles behind and paint splattered on skin. I don't plan it.. I just can't help it. It spills out of me. Everywhere. I'm the mom who sings loud, who lets any room become a paint party, who says it's okay to cry big, love big, and wear two different socks if you feel like it. We make castles out of notebooks and crowns out of "why?" We don't follow the lines.. we draw new ones with sidewalk chalk and big dreams. And sometimes, when the world feels heavy, I close my eyes and imagine a tiny house by the ocean, just me and her, holding hands, where no one tells us how to be. We're wildflowers. Not the kind that stay in flower beds. We grow where we want. We laugh loud, spin around, and wear clothes that don't match but totally go together. Because she's my favorite person. She makes me brave. She makes me kind. She's the reason I stay soft, even when the world feels mean.

I feel like I have to wear a smile. Pretend I'm happy. Hold it all together. Answer every question. Make every decision. People say they want to help they want to support me but I don't know how to say yes. I don't know how to take help. My EGO. My PRIDE. They keep my hands in fists, my mouth shut. I hold it all inside of me. My blood burns. Sadness overflows. She smiles so wide, the world believes, but the mirror knows what no one sees. A scream trapped in a silent shell, a private, quiet kind of hell. I laugh on cue. I play the part. But inside me, it's chaos. A war zone. Tears begging for release, and I don't even know how to cry them anymore. Her eyes perform, her laugh is light, but battles rage alone each night. The surface shines, the cracks run deep the wounds she hides, the pain she keeps. People say, "Just ask." They say, "You're not alone." But how do you ask when you've trained yourself to never need anyone? She's practiced grace, she's played the part, while fury burns beneath my heart. A war of truth behind each grin a fight to hold it all within. And now… I'm sitting here alone. Everyone just wanted time with me. To love me. To be close. And I chose the silence. The space. I built this room out of walls instead of arms. Now I have what I said I wanted… and it feels like nothing. Just me, and the scream behind the smile.

I never thought I was different. Not really. Not until the world kept handing me mirrors that curved the edges of my truth, warping what I knew into something unfamiliar. This is the room no one asks to enter. The one they call cold, distant, guarded. But this room wasn't built to keep people out it was built to keep me safe when the world mistook softness for surrender and quiet for weakness. He calls me a lone wolf like it's an insult. But wolves choose solitude when the noise gets loud, when the pack stops listening. I chose this a small circle, a clear boundary, a home made of knowing myself even when others don't. I'm not cold. I'm just not performative. I don't sugarcoat truth or paint my words in pastels. I hand over stone solid, raw, real. This room echoes. It thinks in loops in checklists and what-ifs. It keeps score of silence, replays tone, memorizes exits. Not because it's scared, but because it has learned what happens when it isn't prepared. They say I push people away, but the truth is I just don't let them in unless they knock with kindness and stay with care. I'm not trying to be different. I just am. I want to be happy but never at the cost of pretending. Let them call me a lone wolf. They don't know what it means to live in this room of earned peace where I don't have to shrink, where silence isn't loneliness but power. Where I can breathe.

I want to be happy. I want it so bad I paint in every color I own. Smile so wide the canvas can't hold it, and still, somewhere under all that light, something in me is crying just not in black. Even my tears come out loud. Even my grief has glitter in it. People look at this piece and see joy, and they're not wrong, but they're not seeing all of it either. There's a burning that doesn't leave. I've tried to reason with it, paint over it, dance through it, raise a whole tiny human, while it sits low in my chest like something that never got to finish saying what it needed to say. There's a song Scout and I play in the car. It says, if you don't like your job, quit. So simple a kid can sing it. So simple I still can't do it. I stayed. I always stay. Loyalty, or fear of letting someone down, or the old habit of making myself smaller so everyone else stays comfortable I don't even know anymore which one it actually is. But some rooms in me don't have any of that in them. The one where it's just Scout and I, dancing badly, swimming loud, me doing Olaf's voice for the thousandth time today, because I never get tired of the laugh it gets. That room doesn't ask me to prove anything. I want to be love. I want to be the sun not just stand in it, be it, the way everyone says Scout is, my tiny warrior princess, all light, like it runs in her the same way this burning runs in me. Maybe it does. Maybe that's the trade. I carry the fire so she gets to carry the sunshine. Maybe I get to carry both eventually. That's the room I'm trying to live in more. Not the one with the big feelings on display. The sunlit one. The one that's just ours.