Indecision often comes at a price, the final sum totaling up to the wasted time, the spent anxiety, the needless rumination. I am an indecisive person, and I have learned that it is far better to settle with simplicity, with efficiency, than to aim for complexity.

Everything in the room is uniformly white, creating the impression of a dreamlike, far-off state of being. There are four corners—the standard amount for rooms, I believe. A couch and a bed face each other from opposite sides of the room, with a table beside the couch and a cabinet beside the bed. A lone window sits in the center of one wall.

Without further investigation, everything is clean and white and simple. There are no blemishes, no dirt stains, no dust. Nothing is out of place, everything looks perfect and minimalistic and medical. If you don't open the cabinet, if you don't lift the couch cushions, if you don't look under the bed, if you don't reach around the bottom of the table, if you don't peer further into this room, everything is clean and white and simple and perfect, everything is perfect.

Now, if you open the cabinet, you'll hear whispers of long-gone shouts, you'll see the dust of old anxieties and the dark oozing putty of current fears. If you lift the couch cushions, you'll see rusty pins and jagged needles, you'll see old sweat and remnants left behind from years upon years of sitting on edge. If you look under the bed, you'll see dust bunny memories, you'll see faded dreams and a gaunt-looking cat hiding in the corner—if you look close enough, you might even see the monsters, though they mostly come out at night, mostly. If you reach under the bottom of the table, you'll feel scratches and gashes in the wood, lost relics of fights and nights spent clawing for a way out, searching for a hidden door that'll take you somewhere, anywhere.

If you look out the window, you'll see a cloudy gray expanse. Sometimes it looks like the sea, and when you stare out, you might hear the sounds of a foghorn in the distance, haunting, lost, longing for something left behind, something forgotten, irretrievable. Sometimes it looks like the summit of a mountain, and when you stare out, you might hear the wind howling and screaming like ghosts of old miners, you might feel the chill of alpine wind like claws against your face, scraping, scratching, piercing, freezing. Sometimes it doesn't look much like anything, and the world outside seems frightening in its emptiness, and you know that if you leave you'll be all alone in an unfamiliar, unforgiving environment. Sometimes it looks a whole lot like everything, and you know that the second you step out, you'll experience the rest of your life in one short moment and you'll die from over-excitation, you'll die from too much all at once.

The window frightens me, all alone in the center of the wall, because if I can look out, then maybe someone could look in, maybe someone could see me, see me.

I sometimes consider leaving this room, and sometimes I leave for a little, just a little, never too long. It never takes too long for me to miss the security of the known, for my fears and anxieties to overwhelm me and force me to retreat to this aesthetically sterile haven stuffed with dark memories and bad habits.

The room is white and clean and I've worked hard to keep the decay and rot away, to stave off the inevitable atrophy of my tight grip on existence. I don't get guests very often, but if anyone came to visit, they'd see a clean room, a perfect room. They'd compliment me on my furniture, on my cleanliness, on my minimalistic lifestyle. They wouldn't see the churning mess of emotions that fills the cabinets, that stuffs the couch cushions, that seethes under the bed; they wouldn't smell the sweet and sticky odor of my overwhelming sadness or the crisp and lively scent of my irrepressible mania; they wouldn't hear the shouts of my countless fears and anxieties. I don't get guests very often, but I work hard to maintain a perfect facade should anyone care to stop by.

It's not necessarily that I like comfort, but rather that I need comfort, that I need the familiar, that I am a creature of habit and I cannot escape my well-worn grooves. I need comfort and familiarity and this room is plain and simple and perfect—as close to perfect as I can come, that is. I wish I had a room with more life and more energy, a room with more decorations and more overt happiness. I wish I had a more detailed room, but I know that I'd pay the price with my indecision, I know that the tapestries and posters would fade and tear, I know that the picture frames would splinter and the mirrors would shatter, I know that the soft lights would sputter and die out, I know that the books would rot away, I know that the clock on the wall would tick and tick and tick and erode my sanity down to the finest point, I know that the pretty duvet cover would stain easily and discolor quickly.

My indecision would take beautiful futures and mangle them into their worst aspects, my indecision would turn complexity into hell. My indecision overwhelms me when I am faced with decisions—it was hard enough deciding on sparse minimalism, on the color white, on the placement of the window and furniture, and I cannot imagine decorating this room, I cannot imagine the torment of making decision after decision after decision after decision after decision and so on and so forth until eventually I lose my mind and lose my sanity and lose the rest of my life to worry, to pacing, to striding back and forth with no confidence whatsoever.

It's easier to live in a simple room, a white room, a room where I store my dark features under the bed and in the cabinets and in the couch cushions. It's easier to pretend I have everything in my life together, it's easier to appear perfect if I don't have to perfect anything, if I can leave everything white and uncolored and unembellished. It's easier if I don't start, because then I can never fail, and I can go on living in this white room with a gray world outside my window.

This is a small room, a simple room, a white room. There's not much space in here, but there's room for indecision, there's always room for indecision.

She used to lay in that spare bedroom, wondering what it would be like if it were hers. She had shared a room with her little sister, which worked out when she was 9 and her sister was 3. But she is in High School now. She and her sister fought because she liked things clean and her sister didn't. After watching the movie Tangled she wondered what it would be like, to be stuck in this room. she thought of all the things she could do with this room. Now she knew, and it SUCKED.

As an active person, she couldn't go anywhere, and as an extrovert, she couldn't talk to people. She sat and did her schoolwork, paced her room, watched a show, read a book, and did all sorts of things to keep her occupied. She even tried a puzzle, which she wasn't really into. She had everything she needed. A desk to work on, a nice bed, books to read, music to play, and art to do. But without people to do them with, there seemed to be no point. She missed people. But what she missed most of all was when she was unable to see her basketball team play their first game. She wasn't the player, she was the coach and had really grown to care for the kids she worked with week to week. She had to miss the whole day, all the volunteer work. She was stuck and though she tried to fight it, even though there was no one there to see, tears ran down her face.

In the center of a black room stood nappy black man pacing the floor. Corner to corner, he held his chin and glanced out the window, rectangular with a slider announcing the option to shut himself from the world. The furniture's color eluded him, outside of the ray's reach and made up of contrasting styles from different eras. His bed wasn't even bed, more of mattress on stilts, and his door was so thin it seemed painted on--black with tears of a shabby paintjob trailing off the sides.

I hide my books, I hide my hands, I hide my thoughts. I hide my touch, I hide my views, I hide my heart. I hide regret and regret that I regret. I hide to hide but the light always finds me here. Every night the moon, new or full, keeps me up and aware of how empty this pursuit is. I reflect to understand the world, losing more of my identity through conflicting thoughts. My table is covered in notes, notebooks, and inkless pens. Caps litter the floor beneath the bed, just out of sight from me and any other eyes. Somehow, I'm afraid of other eyes from all the way up here, looking down at the ants of society, brave enough to engage or risk failure. How long can I convince myself to stay here? I wonder this every time I enter, couped up for weeks on end.

He feels empty, ironically, full of himself. Smart, above it all, like the outlier who'll make something of himself while the social school flounders. Three pictures peak out a slit in his mattress of his family and girlfriend, both which he hasn't seen for equal amounts of time. He feels like a hypocrite, stupid to assume a single human has the philosophical, psychological, and spiritual answers the world needs--knowing all too well how they stemmed from other realms, heads, and mouths. Sometimes he doesn't feel at all, watching and waiting for someone to care. Knock on his door or call his dead phone.

"No, that would be awful."

Why would anyone want that?

This room would be what I need, simultaneously what I don't. The introspection quickly morphed into hyperconsciousness: overthinking in this small room. I don't know if I'd be better off in a bigger room. I wonder if I'd want to leave that too.