There is a room in my house we call the red room. It has ten windows that hang from floor to ceiling. It is light filled and warm in the summer and spring, and freezing cold in the winter and fall. The badly painted white trimmed doors are cracked and peeling so that the dark wood beneath the white paint peeks out and is a reminder of the history that hides below the surface. The walls, a color akin to cranberry sauce that has just been smeared onto the surface, shine like blood in the sunlight and recede to the color of my mother’s nail polish titled “Wicked in the Shadows”. In the far corner of this long and narrow room stands a neglected and tired treadmill which has been repurposed as a coat hanger. To the right of it hangs a painting that my father made in his twenties of a soldier on a horse that looks as if it was painted with his fingers. Just beyond the painting sits an old wooden upright piano that as a child I labeled the white keys with wrong notes. Now, when I sit and play my fingers cover the handwritten notes and I can see how much time has passed. Along the far wall, at the back of the room, is a line of guitars, which stand like the soldiers that are missing in my father’s painting. Piles of books, a Coca Cola lamp, skateboards, a set of bongos, and a rocking chair fill the center of the space making it impossible to navigate without feeling like I’m moving through an obstacle course.
The red room is unlike any other room in my house, and when I am in it I become free. Whether it be picking up one of the soldier guitars lined up in the room and playing a song that has been stuck in my head all day, playing the piano that still makes off keyed songs, or just lying on the carpet with headphones in and contemplating what I will do for the rest of my life, the red room holds something so essential to my freedom, which is music. Music encases me in strength, happiness, and even sadness, but is not constraining. Music shows no judgment and has no expectations, except to listen, feel, and enjoy. Music is a gateway to understanding life’s mysteries and relating to those who know what you are feeling because, at one point, they felt the same way and wrote a song about it.
I used to hope by the end of my young adulthood, I would know exactly what I needed to do and who I needed to be. I feel that as college students, we have been taught by society that we should know where to fit in by now, but in reality, it is not that easy. The thing about the red room is that I know who I am when I am in it. I am Bridgette Hornung, a young individual that still listens to The Beatles and the Jonas Brothers when she gets sad, an individual who holds herself to high standards and knows that no matter what she chooses to do with her life, she will succeed. An individual who, no matter how many times her parents tell her, will always leave the light on in the room she feels most like herself in. This is the place where I am perfectly content.