Choosing a space, designing it to my want by filling it up with my muses and interests was what excited me when we shifted to a new house. The space I chose became exactly what I wanted it to be. I filled it up with post-it notes, song lyrics, journals, books, and fandom posters and collectibles (some bought, most made by myself). Even the smallest thoughts I had, I hung on my bedroom wall.
This, surrounding myself with everything I loved; everything that had even the littlest impact on my life shaped my thought process in all my writing. It was the quotes on my wall and the view outside my window that kept me inspired.
However, this confined four-walled space, while influencing me by being my own, also became my personal woe. By trying to integrate every small bit of me into that space, I was also burying the past versions of myself; the potential I had but could never live up to. So, when this room I’d so firmly, excitedly chosen for myself started reeking of a graveyard, the kitchen upstairs, the one space I avoided so much, became my refuge.
There was no big reason to avoid the kitchen. After all, that’s where the food’s in. I simply avoided being away from people, the constant noise, and the duty it asked me to fulfill for simply being a girl. I could never understand how anyone could stand to be there when the kitchen just with its name asks so much of them. Even in the silent nights, the never-ending whining of fridge and water dispenser remained all the reason to ignore it. That was until one mid night when I could find peace in my own space no longer.
In the most agonizing fit of feeling out of place in my chair, I went upstairs and turned on the kitchen light to (surprisingly) find it so inviting. The fridge noise could very well be ignored; the dining table had more space than my desk could ever have and the emptiness of chairs was all the void I needed to be away from my cluttered mind. I immediately took my notebook and many torn pages along with a pen and laptop to the kitchen and started writing. Words flowed.
I made this my routine. I would get an idea and to write them down on paper, I would take all my belongings to the dining table making that little unbounded space my own. My jazz music ambience got replaced with the fridge’s and the water dispenser’s hums, the big lights of my room got replaced with the warm night light and the view outside the window was of stars rather than one single tree from my desk.
Every week, with each article, the kitchen became my own for some 2 hrs or so. What shocked me most about this was how easily the one place I never wanted to be turned into a place I could write with so much ease in. What all things my room required to be even called mine, the kitchen didn’t even require a small portion of. A working pen and an empty page was all it took.
In all this, my slow realization followed through with an understanding that even though we fixate on a space and curate it by cramming it up with our identities, some spaces become ours without any of that fuss. Sometimes, even something as ordinary as a kitchen can end up feeling like ours because it just lets us breathe.
I didn’t need a wall full of random book quotes echoing back to my already chaotic mind. I didn’t want to explore different possibilities for myself spread out on the desk. I only needed a table where I could sit down as I was, not who I expected myself to be. And strangely, this table; much bigger than my desk, gave shelter.
I suppose, sometimes, spaces become ours because neither of us demands an effort from the other. We don’t expect that calm from a space, and in return, it doesn’t demand to be filled.