room for indecision

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.