A Room That Stays With You

Close your eyes for a few moments and let your memory wander back through the places you’ve lived, visited, or passed through. Somewhere in that wandering, a room will surface — not necessarily the most important room among the many of your life, but one that stays. Maybe it’s a childhood bedroom, a grandparent’s kitchen, a first apartment, a hospital waiting room, or somewhere you were briefly but intensely alive.

Let yourself stand in that room again. What does it smell like? What’s the light doing? What sounds belong to it? Who is there? What are the feelings you associate with it?

Now write about it. Describe the room as you remember it. Not as it necessarily was, but as it lives in your memory. Then ask yourself: what was happening in my life when this room mattered? What did I feel safe enough to do there, or what did I wish I could escape? If that room could speak, what would it say about who you were then, and what does returning to it now tell you about who you’ve become?