A reflections’s lament

I had always harboured an irrational dread of open doors. Not just those that contained the darkness and shadows of quaint rooms, but rather all doors. Those that guard obsolete memories and insignificant nothingness, those that conceal the secrets and wickedness of times past, and even those that offer a false sense of sanctuary. 

In a room full of fire and glee, even a closed wardrobe harbours the murkiness of midnight. Even in a place bathed in sunlight, a place fuelled by the burning sphere above, darkness still lingers in corners untouched.

Since I made the move, I had felt profound loneliness. It was a long journey to undertake alone, but ignorance and naivety are powerful tools in the mind of someone so young. I never imagined it would be easy, moving halfway across the world, from rain to desert, but I could never have foreseen how isolation would weigh heavily on my mind and soul. 

Loneliness can change a person. Like alcohol or narcotics, the brain begins to adapt, altering perceptions of reality. You hear the world differently, feel the world differently, see the world differently.

At first, it was the little things. Things one would not normally notice or find the least bit uncanny. But there I was, alone in my new bed for the first time, staring around the room, perplexed and disoriented by the shape and size of my new abode. As my eyes fixated on the bland, blank walls, my mind began to ask questions that did not necessarily need answers but craved them as my curiosity grew. Why could I not see my ceiling?

I’m aware of how that sounds, I truly am, but I cannot deny that this question tormented me as I lay my head on my firm, new pillow. The ceiling was out of view. Just out of view. Not completely beyond the scope of a glance upward, but ever so slightly out of view, as if hiding above me. I can’t explain why this quirk of home design annoyed me so much. But it did. Why were the shapes and angles of my room so different? Why were they so unfamiliar?

The next morning, I stood alone in my room, puzzled once more by a strange yet oddly calming feature of the place I now called home. Emptiness surrounded the interior. No mirror to see even myself, no painting upon the wall to express colour, no window to glimpse the world beyond the plain, white existence that was now my reality. 

I called in my flatmate to see if he noticed anything odd, unnatural, or even slightly menacing about the room's calming aura. Nothing. His reassurances that it was only my home for nine months of the year for the next two years fell on deaf ears. As he spoke, I heard only murmurs. My ears, eyes, all my senses focused on this abyss of a colourless world, searching for something I could point to and blame for the uncanny feeling I had. 

Sleep was elusive. Harder than usual. I began to have coffees in the evening; espressos, lattes, americanos—anything to attribute my lack of sleep to something other than my new abode. Although there was no mirror, the wardrobe that faced me, situated against the far wall next to the door, was the only reflective object in the room. 

This piece of furniture that harboured darkness and uncertainty when closed was the only way the room could see itself. One door of the wardrobe was glossed, different from the other three wooden, well-furnished doors. This door faced me and my bed.

I had hated mirrors since childhood. I remember a school trip when I was nine, the first time I had been away from family, and one of my friends told me the tale of ‘Bloody Mary’. I couldn’t sleep the entire trip. Night after night, even after tiring ourselves with games of football and ding-dong-ditch, and consuming candy bar after candy bar, sleep never came until I returned home to familiar surroundings. This is the longest I have gone without sleep since then, yet I am supposed to be in a place I can call home.

Every night I stare at the glossed door of the wardrobe, lit only by the lamp in the corner of my room, fixated on the room's surroundings through eyes not my own. I don’t think I blink when I look. Maybe I am asleep or in a deep trance, but every night it is the same. No eyes closed, possessed by a glossed door. 

I stare back at the man who gazes at me every night while I lie awake. He looks like me. Same colour hair, same face shape, but something is different. I don’t recognise that man anymore. I feel as though I used to know him, in a time before this room consumed my mind, but I just can’t put my finger on where that could be.

As I study the uncanny figure, I think to myself, ‘I’m not sure what would be worse: opening the glossed wardrobe door and allowing the darkness within to seep in, flood, and overbear the purity of my desolate room, or let the unfamiliar figure in my reflection glare at me night after night’.