When my memory tries to go back to one of the very first moments it truly went live, I am in my closet.
As a child I shared a bedroom with my sister, and the closet was one space where the chaotic nature of our ten-year age difference was truly represented. Whereas in our bedroom there was a clear divide between her mess and mine, in the closet our destruction converged and swamped over every inch of that large walk-in space.
I remember standing on a mountain of toys, pulling and pulling on the sandy paw of a dog that would later travel the world with me. But as hard as I pulled he remained stuck. Exhausted and frustrated, my tiny body flung itself down on top of the pile, allowing the sharpened edge of some long-forgotten game to stab between my shoulder blades and knock me into consciousness. My first real memories are not ones of community, or acceptance, but of simply being alone in my closet.
As I grew older my closet evolved. When my sister left she took all of the strange and grown-up things I used to hold and put back when I heard her coming along with her, and suddenly the space around me seemed increasingly vast.
My mountain of toys disappeared to various boxes and organized piles, and my closet's deep blue carpet was revealed. A bean bag chair given to me one Christmas made its home in the corner of that closet, large and pink and just for me. A small red, blue, and yellow shelf soon made a place there as well, where I kept my books and movies. I spent hours at a time in there, sneaking bread and butter sandwiches while I hid behind a curtain of clothes.
There would be days when, ashamed of the fact that I couldn't bring myself to go outside on hot summer days, I would sit there in silence, too afraid to pick up a book. If someone heard the turning of a page they would know I was in here and not out there. And if I'm not out there with all the other girls in their tank tops and their two-piece bathing suits then what was I, anyway?
The longer I sat in my closet the darker it became, until I could no longer even see myself. And once I couldn't see myself it became safe to open the door.
In high school my closet sat stagnant on the face of my room, like an ill-placed beauty mark, even a scar. Its door remained shut, and if it had had a lock it would have been barred forever. The contents of that room sat, gathering dust and spiders, and soon I was able to forget the things I kept in it. It was like I didn't even have a closet.
My senior year of high school our teacher asked us to create a 30-minute presentation of dance, music, movement, whatever we wanted it to be. The day of the performance I had to step in for a girl who had left to audition for Juilliard, and I stood facing my best friend in the crossover. On the stage was a cacophony of feet; pounding and flying, one after the other, but between us was silence. I couldn't see her face, and I can only assume she couldn't see mine.
When they pulled the curtain on us the noise disappeared, collapsing down to reveal us tangled up together, smearing red lipstick across each others faces. I performed the rest of the piece with her lipstick imprinted all across my face. On the bus home I texted a few friends: "Guess what? I kissed her today."
"What did you want to do that for?"
What did I want to do that for? I didn't have an answer so I stashed my phone away.
At home I crack open the door to my closet and step inside for the first time in years, settling myself in among my discarded books, the half-written stories, the cobwebs hanging from the light bulb. My chair is long gone, and I sit against the torn posters that litter my wall, my shoulders forced against well-muscled men with no faces, just plaster where a smile should be.
What did I do that for?
What did I want to do that for?
