A Room Fit For Two

The girl began in an open doorway of a very dark room. On the edge of where the room ended and the hallway began.

She was always afraid of the dark. 

But it was staring her in the face like a chained dog. 

Eventually it felt easier to just enter the room, enter the darkness. Be a roommate to the dog instead of a victim of it. The dark was scary. It still is. But her eyes adjusted. 

The door she walked through remained open. But she knew she could never fully leave. She needed to be huddled in a corner or balancing on a tightrope, and she was an ungraceful coward; scared of the inbetweens. 

Sometimes people would sit outside the doorway and talk to her. But if they didn’t sit long enough she knew their eyes did not adjust to see her silhouette soaked in shadow. She knew they weren’t seeing her. But at least it was something. 

And something is always better than nothing. 

Sometimes, not often but sometimes, people would sit long enough for their eyes to adjust. They would be so nice. She knew they saw her better, that their eyes had adjusted. But she always wondered if they only liked sitting in the doorway because they knew she couldn’t leave. Some sort of charity work or a chore that can never quite touch you. 

The girl in the room would try to get people to stay longer. She would tell them she loved them and kiss them and compliment them and give them gifts. She would do anything she could to prove she was worth their time. Usually it wouldn’t work, and she couldn’t blame them. You can’t live life through a doorway, and she knew no one owes her anything. 

Only a few times, a rare few times, people stepped into the room with her. 

She would gasp with shock and run to hug them and not even realize she was slowly pulling them into her darkness. She was cornering them, their eyes more adjusted than ever. They’d learn to love her, or maybe they loved how she made them feel. She knew deep down that they had no one else to love or no one else to make them feel that way. They were in the room too. It makes sense to love the only person within reach but that does not mean you can drag them down with you. 

The girl in the room would kick the people out. The ones that loved her. She wouldn’t explain why. She didn’t know why. She created a lot more darkness in the world by not taking care of her own. She just wanted to be alone. If she could learn to stop creating darkness maybe that would be enough. 

She would see the people she pushed away through the doorway and decided to just look at the floor instead.

Then she heard a pounding on the wall. 

A great pounding.

It scared the girl.

She couldn't tell what it was for a moment. 

She saw rubble and drywall fall to the ground. The sound was loud and made her twitch, but she couldn't take her eyes off of it. 

The wall capsized and exhaled with her. 

A boy. 

Also in a dark room. 

She was confused. 

This was a boy she had been trying to get to stay for a while now, she had almost accepted that her bouts of love weren't going to convince him. 

Why is he here? 

What changed?

His hands are all bloody. 

“You’re in a dark room too?” She asked.

He nods. She always suspected this, from that very first drive home he probably doesn’t even remember.

But he knows how to leave his room. Even if he can only muster it for a moment at parties or for the length of a movie, he knows how to, he can do it. 

Maybe he learned to do it just so he could sit in the doorway of his brother. Maybe he is braver than the girl in the room. Maybe he began outside of the room and chose to go inside. Maybe he was scared of how the outside world illuminated him. 

But now they shared a room. And it was bigger. Big enough for two! With sorrowful laughter bouncing off the walls and parked car poetry. 

They know it's not ideal. The girl is worried he only loves her because she is within reach. Maybe he is worried about that too. But now there is double the room and double the doors and double the people.

They can be basked in darkness together and hold hands in the hurt.

One day the boy will leave. Because he knows he can. Because he knows he must.

He won’t be scared of the outside light anymore. Maybe that is through talking to the girl, or taking pills that make him dizzy, or falling in love, or something different. He will have rooms of light instead of darkness and he will have so many people to love. His hands will heal. 

But he will feel guilty doing all of that if the girl is still back in the dark room. He will tell himself he left her like everyone else did, he will hate loving her through a doorway. He will hate the outside light if he knows she won’t be with him. 

The girl doesn’t know what will happen when the boy leaves their shared room. She knows he will eventually, she smiles thinking about it. She smiles thinking about his wedding day or his films or his stories, she will get to see it, even if it is perfectly framed in a rectangle. 

He threatens to stay. She screams at him not to. She has never been good at yelling but she would deteriorate her vocal cords if it meant he gets all the light and love he can. There is no sense in staying to love someone in the dark. They know there is no right answer. 

They will both hate themselves for a while, they both have for an even longer while. 

But that is no reason for him to stay. 

He says he won’t be able to enjoy the outside world fully if the girl can’t join him. He says he will feel like he is leaving her behind. And perhaps in the most literal definition he is. But he can’t take her out of the room. She knows that. He knows that.

But now, when he leaves, the girl will have a room fit for two. Double the space, double the doors. She lost her roommate but now she has room to walk in, to roll around, to dance through. Now she has two doorways to peer out of. Two doorways to talk to people through. 

She can only learn to leave on her own, and if she ever had any chance to go beyond the doorway, now it has doubled. Thanks to him.