The walls of my bedroom have no more space on them. They are covered ceiling to floor with art: pictures and quotes torn from magazines, posters of my favorite movies and artists — including but not limited to Ladybird, Inception, Harry Styles and La La Land — hanging plants, collage art, photobooth photos with friends, not one but two calendars, scarves from the Portland women’s soccer team, and still more. I also collect compelling random objects, such as paint chips and pieces of fabric, to tack to my walls. Despite my friends informing me that I’m out of my mind, I have adopted the narrative that I’m inspired, eccentric, and frugal (perhaps with a hint of nutty).
Even when I was younger, before I lived in my current home, I frequently spent time indulging in my artistic endeavors, always using blue painter’s tape to stick them to my walls. At the time I possessed a great tenderness for animals, which was evident by looking at my ceiling. For years, I collected a considerable abundance of images from a magazine called Adorable Animals, adhering them onto the slanted ceiling above my bed so I could admire them before I drifted off to sleep every night. My brother and two of his friends aided me in taping them up for two hours, as I was too small to reach even when standing on my bed. In spite of my mom’s protests, I enjoyed using up entire ink cartridges to print semi-blurry photos of my pets, friends, and family to staple up. The consequences for pounding holes into my walls were invariably worth it because surrounded by an army of darling faces, I felt as jubilant and safe as ever. Peeling my crafts from the paint was a genuine tragedy for me when we were in the process of moving out of that house.
We relocated to our current house at the end of my eighth-grade year, around the same time that my life was beginning to shift dramatically. The onset of high school, an unfamiliar campus where I knew nobody, was emotional, to say the least. My mental stability collapsed, each mishap sent me into another breakdown. School was the apical stressor; I was infrequently present, rarely spoke my intellect. The criticism from my teachers to participate more, despite my active nonverbal engagement in class, sent me spiraling. Amidst those initial three years, my bedroom stood empty, bearing nothing but the necessities: a twin bed, a mahogany desk, and its corresponding chair, and a scarce bookshelf. My art remained interrupted. It wasn’t until my junior year that I had a shift in my mental health. As I found my way back to my true self, enhancing my space with ephemera became a powerful experience and mode of expression for me. My bedroom and mind coincided with one another: as soon as I gained more mental stability, my space and art flourished, and in turn, my art promoted further healing.
My bedroom doesn’t show my public façade: the selective mutism and reservation that has been continually slandered and shamed throughout my lifetime by educators, professionals, and family. I like it this way. Instead, the contents of my interior, which I am not always able to express, are visible to the naked eye. The adornments, the art, are lucrative as they speak for themselves. Posting transient reminders of my connections and devotions, even if it may appear as clutter to outsiders, is my way of expressing myself in a nonverbal way that I am tenaciously determined to normalize.
The walls of my bedroom are an ever-changing gallery of my psyche. I have re-discovered how powerful it is to express myself visually. In a way, my room is one extensive collage of my youth. If you look closely, you can see evidence of my close relationships: a soccer photo from first grade, a ticket stub from a concert I saw with my mom, a favorite birthday card. Albeit I’ve now graduated from pasting adorable animal vignettes over my walls, my emotional validity has remained indistinguishable.
