episode draft - advanced creative nonfiction

When do you go from trying to be who you want to be and actually being that person?
One evening last week, I walked into my bedroom on a B-line to the bathroom. As my toes shuffled across the white carpet anticipating the tile, I looked around and was overcome by an awkward sense of pride over my space. I turned around and stood there in the doorway of my bathroom, shoulder perched against one side of the threshold, my b-line trip temporarily halted.
I don’t know what exactly I was looking for, but I scanned the room with all the thoroughness of a stranger in a new place. Based on what I saw, I was proud of the person I imagined myself to be. The bed was made, three small white pillows behind one large white pillow with quilt detailing. One would think the inhabitant of this space is responsible, neat, a master of making beds, very pretty beds at that, every single morning. I smirked a half-smirk, adjusting my shoulder against the doorframe. I’m terrible at making my bed. I much prefer staying in my heaven of a bed until the very last moment in which I shift from being “just on time” to “barely on time”. I had recently read something in a Discovery Health article about how making your bed every morning provides a “reliable framework” each day and something about separating a sleep mindset to an alert mindset, so I had been wrestling with myself to get it done every morning. The inhabitant of this space is helplessly messy, a chronic attempter of self-improvement.
My gaze shifted to my beloved Christmas lights draping along 3 of the 4 walls (the one strand I stole from my parents garage didn't quite fit the whole way around), whimsical and cluttered and reminiscent, to me, of a type of romantic Fern Gully nymph-tree décor. I smiled to myself again, knowing of the inner turmoil this one strand of old Christmas lights had given me since Christmas had passed. In the doorway I appeased both sides of myself, the girl who loves those lights even post-holidays and all the Disney-esque feelings they give her, and the girl who, in the back of her mind, loathed the fact that they did not make their way around all four walls perfectly. I loved the fact that it seemed artistic and inspiring and hated the fact that my room did not look like the pages of Real Simple magazine.
Again my gaze scanned the room, to the dark antique furniture I borrowed from a family friend, to the Polaroid pictures of myself and my friends and our various faces stuck on the mirror of my dresser, bringing back over me where I was when those photos were taken and how I felt in those moments. My room, I decided, was full of contradictions of who I really am and who I want to be, and how extremely normal that is.
Toes brushing back over the clean carpet, I pulled back the sheets to my bed, and climbed in. I squirmed and pulled until I had the optimum position for relaxation and observation. I scanned the room from my new perch, noticing first my little weekly dry-erase calendar that I have up on my wall, just beside the door of my bathroom. I thought to myself that I do a pretty good job erasing it and writing in my weekly goings-on every Sunday. I am a collector of a plethora of organizational products to actually or theoretically keep my life in order. I don't know how many times I actually look at the calendar and remember what I have to do later that day or later that week, but I think the writing it down helps me. So I write it down there. I write it down in my pocket planner. I write it down in daily lists I make on loose leaf papers so I can feel the utmost productivity when I cross off things from the list. Bored with my own train of thoughts, I pulled out my hands from underneath the warm, homey covers and held them out before me, wall calendar blurry in the background. My nail polish was chipped and my hands looked older than I remembered, like they didn’t belong on the end of my arms.
At that moment, my room felt like a representation of everything I wish I was. I wished I was organized and I wished I lived in Europe and I wished I had lots of money to appease my expensive, Crate & Barrel, white-girl taste. I wished I didn't have that taste and that I really cared enough about world hunger and orphans and widows to devote my life to actually helping them. I wished I remembered that girl in the pictures, my former self, young and not jaded yet and hopeful about anything and irritated at people who used the word "jaded" in reference to growing up. I turned my body the opposite way to face towards the wall, feet tangling in the messy sheets. I pulled the comforter up underneath my chin, breathing in a deep sigh.
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