I am a member of the KotaPress support group. We have a Q&A throughout each month, that Kara sometimes includes in the online loss journal. I finally had some time to participate onlist again, and they were discussing Emotional Mansions. I think that at least one of my emotional rooms shows that I watch/read too many period pieces and Jen�s monster poem from years ago had way too big of an impression on me. Regardless, I thought I would share what I wrote.
In my emotional mansion there are three rooms. Melancholy, Happiness and Love.
The Melancholy Room is long, quiet, dark and cold. When I walk into this room, I am always wearing period clothing. Something that a governess would wear, dark and drab, complete with a corset and lace up boots. My hair is always darker too, pulled back into a very tight bun that always gives me a headache. Because of my clothing, it is always hard to breathe in this room. I always feel drained of energy. Thick dusty drapes cover floor to ceiling windows all along the far wall. Amazingly shards of light show on the ceiling and occasionally along the length of the window coverings. These rays of light are the only things keeping the Melancholy Room from being pitch black. Across from the wall of windows, is the fireplace. The Mantle has ornate carvings of flowers and vines all along the top and down the sides. The fireplace itself is large enough for me to walk into. Covered in soot and never lit, it is barren and cold. No wood, no pokers. Nothing. I often spend time standing there, and kicking the soot from fires past with my boots. Each click of my heels sends little clouds of dust into the air. Sometimes there isn�t a sound in the room, but the click of my heels on the wood floor as I pace along the length of the room or the howling of the wind outside the windows. Sometimes, I sit on the single piece of furniture, a settee with charcoal gray fabric, placed exactly in the middle of the room. If I need music, it will play from the speakers in the ceiling, suddenly and for as long as I want it too. Jazz, R & B, Beethoven, or Violent Femmes. Whatever I want, it is playing. While it plays softly or loudly, depending on the music, I sit on my settee and work on my frown lines, just staring into space and crying on the inside. Others have required of me that I be silent, and the Melancholy Room is where I go to practice that and grieve for the son they don�t want me to talk about. When I was very first thrust into this room, it was my home for over a year. Finally I was able to fight and claw my way out of this room. There are still scratches from my nails along the doorway. From that room, I found the Happiness Room.
There is a window in the Happiness Room, with light blue, lacy curtains on it. I can see the green trees, grass and curbside outside of this room, and often I am touched by the spring breezes. It is where I keep the fa�ade of my smiling face, hanging on a nail on the wall. Sometimes I smile for real in this room because I can reach out to the world. It is the opportunity room, equipped with my desk, computer and telephone. The place where I make my plans for a better life. The place where I pretend to come to terms with the possibility of never being a mommy to a living child. That is when I use my fa�ade the most. When I am only pretending to be happy. When I first came to this room, I used my fa�ade constantly. Now I only use it occasionally, like on Mother�s Day when all of the �mothers� get presents, but me. In the corner of this room, there is also a shower stall. I go there when I feel �dirty� after using my fa�ade. When I feel that I�ve been disloyal to my son, because I didn�t make a fuss on Mother�s Day, or when I tell someone that I don�t have any kids, because to say that I have one that is dead will make me run for the Melancholy Room, and I don�t always want to be there. Sometimes I like to breathe. Often when I am in this room, I will hear tapping at the door. Little tiny rat-tat-tats will assault my hearing. I never answer the door, when the I hear those taps, because I know that evil little doubt monsters are there. Their sole purpose is to drag me back to the Melancholy Room, by my hair. They like to see me in my catatonic state. It gives them power. And even with my fake face on, I don�t want to give them power. If I choose when to go to the Melancholy Room, I maintain power over them. Something I haven�t always had.
The third room is the Love room. There is a skylight in the middle of the ceiling that illuminates the entire room, day or night for some reason. It is painted pink, with red hearts of all shapes and sizes dotting the walls. Here there are pictures of Patrick, Apollo and Keevah. This is also where I keep a dresser full of Colin Michael�s mementos. I keep the pregnancy books, in the bottom drawer, where I normally don�t look at them. I put his clothes in the top drawer. The rest of the drawers are empty. On top of the dresser I have stacked my PCOS books, because I want to read to make sure that I�ll be healthy for Patrick, Apollo and Keevah. This is not something that is important to me when I am in the Melancholy Room, so sometimes I am playing catch-up. There is a big comfy couch in that room. Huge and blue. Next to the couch is a table with a stereo on it. There are CDs on the table and piled neatly around the table and blocking some of the couch. In this room, I am always listening to music, normally cheesy love songs from the 70�s and 80�s. There are no visible doors in this room. Because the only way to get out is through one of two secret doors. Each leads to one of the other rooms, and I can never quite remember which one leads where. But I always know that at any moment the fancy may strike me and I will choose a door, and accept my fate.
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