The Hidden Rooms of My Youth
Natasha Oslinger
Ever since my early childhood, I have found the need to hide. I wouldn’t describe myself specifically as an outsider, but, my overwhelming urge for privacy and confinement often led to long periods of solidarity and exclusion. It all began with Schrodinger’s Room, and ended many years later in the room that wasn’t quite a room. One could argue that each of my childhood retreats holds equal importance in my molting into an outgoing person, but one could also argue that growth never really ends.
The first room existed as a hidden extension to the downstairs bathroom of my early childhood house. I call this room “Schrodinger’s Room” because just as Schrodinger is unaware of the liveliness of his cat, I am unaware of what exactly took place in said room. I must have been four or five at the time, far too young to have extensive and detailed memories of the events that took place in an unlit 10 x 10 closet. The memories that remain are less to do with visuals, and more to do with feelings. What I truly remember about this room was the feeling of comfort. I made refuge in this nook, found comfort in the downward slanted roof and dusty concrete floor. I would sit in here and let everything melt away, let the darkness wrap me up. I would not read or write, I wouldn’t even blink; the activities that occurred in this humid space remain a mystery. Did I actually ever occupy this space, was I every really in the room? Perhaps it was just a dream, a story I made up in my childhood, my secret little hiding place that did not exist outside of my mind. There would only be one way to know if I was there, and that would be to open the door and look inside.
The next room has become known to me as the Peach Room. Several years and several houses after Schrodinger's, when walking into my bedroom, the Peach Room would be completely unknown to any unsuspecting visitor. What the architect of this room had in mind with my hidden chamber baffles me to this day, but at the time I found it delightful. When opening the door and entering my room, opposite the door, was a large sliding glass door, and directly adjacent was a wall with twin closets on each end. Each closet presented as normal internally, but, upon closer examination, one could see a smaller door hidden at the base of the inner wall. The door was small, just large enough for a fully grown adult to shimmy in. For me, these doors were gateways to darkened bliss lit solely by a single battery operated LED pop up light that stuck to the ceiling. This hidden space was more of a corridor than it was a room, for it stretched about four feet wide and 15 feet long through the wall from one closet opening to the other. This corridor was dubbed “the Peach Room” because my surrounding bedroom was painted an obnoxious pastel pink, which dimly lit the Peach Room to be a shade of soft and comfortable murky peach. This was yet another room I spent time hiding in, people didn’t exist in the Peach Room, work didn’t exist, problems didn’t exist, it was simply a poorly lit space that I layed in reclusively.
A few years passed and I moved out of this house and moved to the House of Leaves. This room existed atop the steep slope jetting up the southern end of my back yard. The hill began several paces from the back door of my house and was about 30 feet tall. It flattened out at the top, and the angle of its face was close enough to 90 degrees that anyone trying to climb it had to hunch over to the point that the tops of their shoulders scraped the bottom of their earlobes. The whole hill was covered in trees and shrubbery, and the top was completely hidden to anyone not familiar with the inner workings of the vines. My childish curiosity often led to me exploring the bushes and flowers, and one day I discovered that the right hand corner of the covered plain at the top of the hill formed a perfect little cave. A kid-sized secret grove for me to hide in, somewhere that was just mine. I lived among the trees. I took to the stray branches with my mother’s blue handled scissors and perfected my House of Leaves. It was here I would sit cross legged with a copy of The Atlas of the Natural World trying to identify different cacti and leaves and birds. The shade of the dense oaks made my hidden enclosure several degrees cooler than the surrounding land, and the dirt was coarse and dry, it always seemed to stain my clothes but I never seemed to mind. I would dig my hands in the dirt and close my eyes, pretending that I could soak up all the energy from the world, I became rooted in the earth around me. The branches kept growing, though, chopped leaves sprouted once again, and moss covered the soft dirt. I had to dig up my roots and replant myself.
The final room I call the Unattainable Room because it was simple that, unattainable. This room lived above me, high enough that any ladder could reach, yet I never dared to open it. The entrance to this room was rather uncommon, it wasn’t a door with a handle, it didn’t even open. This door was a 3 x 3 plastered over square on the ceiling directly above my bed. I would lay in bed every night staring up at that box on the wall. How I longed to push it into itself and take a look inside! What was up there? Where there books? Where there boxes? I was perplexed by the idea of this possible hidden world of adventure that lived behind the Unattainable Door. I would often imagine that as I lie face up on my bed, someone in the ceiling would be watching me too, somehow able to look through the wall and gaze down at me as I gaze up at them. This idea would often frighten me, but, it never seemed to frighten me enough to move my bed just an inch to the right or left to avoid being parallel with the door. Part of me would fall asleep, but part of me would stay away, and ascend every night into the ceiling. Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the room my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the room my soul to take.
As I grew older, I began to grow distant from my distance. I realized that it’s time to stop hiding, it’s time to gather all the keys and throw them all away. There was Schrodinger’s Room and if I’m really in it, it's been so long since I’ve been back that I don’t know if I have the right to call it my home. The Peach Room with battery operated light, small enough to feel child size, adult enough to feel like my own home. The House of Leaves a shade of green, providing shade to sheltered me, slowly shedding moments before the wind. Then finally, the Unattainable Room, where I am floating several feet above the ground, stationary and drifting gently. A piece of me lives within every single one of these rooms, even the ones that have forgotten me, but I’m not sure if I can really call each of those pieces “myself.” I might a traveler, a shapeshifter, but in a way they will always be me. Little comfort comes knowing I am scattered, what if my walls start shifting? What if I get lost? But the reason I don’t hide anymore is that I myself am Schrodinger’s girl, a Peach person, made of Leaves––Unattainable. I become a part of all the places in which I leave myself behind.
Natasha Oslinger
Ever since my early childhood, I have found the need to hide. I wouldn’t describe myself specifically as an outsider, but, my overwhelming urge for privacy and confinement often led to long periods of solidarity and exclusion. It all began with Schrodinger’s Room, and ended many years later in the room that wasn’t quite a room. One could argue that each of my childhood retreats holds equal importance in my molting into an outgoing person, but one could also argue that growth never really ends.
The first room existed as a hidden extension to the downstairs bathroom of my early childhood house. I call this room “Schrodinger’s Room” because just as Schrodinger is unaware of the liveliness of his cat, I am unaware of what exactly took place in said room. I must have been four or five at the time, far too young to have extensive and detailed memories of the events that took place in an unlit 10 x 10 closet. The memories that remain are less to do with visuals, and more to do with feelings. What I truly remember about this room was the feeling of comfort. I made refuge in this nook, found comfort in the downward slanted roof and dusty concrete floor. I would sit in here and let everything melt away, let the darkness wrap me up. I would not read or write, I wouldn’t even blink; the activities that occurred in this humid space remain a mystery. Did I actually ever occupy this space, was I every really in the room? Perhaps it was just a dream, a story I made up in my childhood, my secret little hiding place that did not exist outside of my mind. There would only be one way to know if I was there, and that would be to open the door and look inside.
The next room has become known to me as the Peach Room. Several years and several houses after Schrodinger's, when walking into my bedroom, the Peach Room would be completely unknown to any unsuspecting visitor. What the architect of this room had in mind with my hidden chamber baffles me to this day, but at the time I found it delightful. When opening the door and entering my room, opposite the door, was a large sliding glass door, and directly adjacent was a wall with twin closets on each end. Each closet presented as normal internally, but, upon closer examination, one could see a smaller door hidden at the base of the inner wall. The door was small, just large enough for a fully grown adult to shimmy in. For me, these doors were gateways to darkened bliss lit solely by a single battery operated LED pop up light that stuck to the ceiling. This hidden space was more of a corridor than it was a room, for it stretched about four feet wide and 15 feet long through the wall from one closet opening to the other. This corridor was dubbed “the Peach Room” because my surrounding bedroom was painted an obnoxious pastel pink, which dimly lit the Peach Room to be a shade of soft and comfortable murky peach. This was yet another room I spent time hiding in, people didn’t exist in the Peach Room, work didn’t exist, problems didn’t exist, it was simply a poorly lit space that I layed in reclusively.
A few years passed and I moved out of this house and moved to the House of Leaves. This room existed atop the steep slope jetting up the southern end of my back yard. The hill began several paces from the back door of my house and was about 30 feet tall. It flattened out at the top, and the angle of its face was close enough to 90 degrees that anyone trying to climb it had to hunch over to the point that the tops of their shoulders scraped the bottom of their earlobes. The whole hill was covered in trees and shrubbery, and the top was completely hidden to anyone not familiar with the inner workings of the vines. My childish curiosity often led to me exploring the bushes and flowers, and one day I discovered that the right hand corner of the covered plain at the top of the hill formed a perfect little cave. A kid-sized secret grove for me to hide in, somewhere that was just mine. I lived among the trees. I took to the stray branches with my mother’s blue handled scissors and perfected my House of Leaves. It was here I would sit cross legged with a copy of The Atlas of the Natural World trying to identify different cacti and leaves and birds. The shade of the dense oaks made my hidden enclosure several degrees cooler than the surrounding land, and the dirt was coarse and dry, it always seemed to stain my clothes but I never seemed to mind. I would dig my hands in the dirt and close my eyes, pretending that I could soak up all the energy from the world, I became rooted in the earth around me. The branches kept growing, though, chopped leaves sprouted once again, and moss covered the soft dirt. I had to dig up my roots and replant myself.
The final room I call the Unattainable Room because it was simple that, unattainable. This room lived above me, high enough that any ladder could reach, yet I never dared to open it. The entrance to this room was rather uncommon, it wasn’t a door with a handle, it didn’t even open. This door was a 3 x 3 plastered over square on the ceiling directly above my bed. I would lay in bed every night staring up at that box on the wall. How I longed to push it into itself and take a look inside! What was up there? Where there books? Where there boxes? I was perplexed by the idea of this possible hidden world of adventure that lived behind the Unattainable Door. I would often imagine that as I lie face up on my bed, someone in the ceiling would be watching me too, somehow able to look through the wall and gaze down at me as I gaze up at them. This idea would often frighten me, but, it never seemed to frighten me enough to move my bed just an inch to the right or left to avoid being parallel with the door. Part of me would fall asleep, but part of me would stay away, and ascend every night into the ceiling. Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the room my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the room my soul to take.
As I grew older, I began to grow distant from my distance. I realized that it’s time to stop hiding, it’s time to gather all the keys and throw them all away. There was Schrodinger’s Room and if I’m really in it, it's been so long since I’ve been back that I don’t know if I have the right to call it my home. The Peach Room with battery operated light, small enough to feel child size, adult enough to feel like my own home. The House of Leaves a shade of green, providing shade to sheltered me, slowly shedding moments before the wind. Then finally, the Unattainable Room, where I am floating several feet above the ground, stationary and drifting gently. A piece of me lives within every single one of these rooms, even the ones that have forgotten me, but I’m not sure if I can really call each of those pieces “myself.” I might a traveler, a shapeshifter, but in a way they will always be me. Little comfort comes knowing I am scattered, what if my walls start shifting? What if I get lost? But the reason I don’t hide anymore is that I myself am Schrodinger’s girl, a Peach person, made of Leaves––Unattainable. I become a part of all the places in which I leave myself behind.