A place of solace. Quiet. Peace. Escape. A place of worship. Of reflection. Of creation. It is not easily defined, it is both universal and singular. Contradictory. The same and yet so different. Your room is your home. Your individualized place of solitude. A place of comfort and discomfort, a place of self, where the mind becomes the only living thing, where different versions of yourself are etched in the walls, the floors, the windows. One’s room is but a mere reflection of one’s self.
When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own she herself was in solitude, inside her room, imagining a space for women to indulge in life. The everyday. Woolf’s writing, in more ways than one, has inspired my everyday thoughts. In me, Woolf’s writing always lives on. A Room of One’s Own was my introduction to the concept of Woolf. To the concept of writing stream of consciousness thoughts on the mundane and important. When I think of a room I think of Virginia Woolf. A room holds power. Often, it is the one place where you are able to be in yourself. To bask in alone-ness and not be left with the feeling of loneliness.
Woolf’s definition or meaning of room was meant to emulate individual freedom, privacy, security, perhaps even time. Though her argument was on feminism and the nature of sexism’s ever prevalent glare, her writing and argument can be applied to many things. Her definition of one’s own room, gives the mundane understanding of a room a more nuanced perspective. It creates one’s room into something beyond the physical. But it is not just Woolf who has thought of what it means to have a room. Painters and poets alike have thought about the power of one’s own room, the power of possibility. The room, one’s room, holds the key to one’s history. Coleridge, van Gogh, Dickinson — they are just a mere few who have all stipulated on what it means to have a room. They have all created and re-created their prose and art within the confines of a small space, within the confines of one’s own room.
Our identities change over time, the I is always shifting. There is no one me, there are multiples. My room holds these multiples. At once filled with posters and magazine clippings, now neatly organized with books and candles. My past selves live on. As the white paint peels on the corner of my wall, and the green, and blue, and pink before it peeks through I am reminded of the other I’s that have lived, and thought, and walked in my place. The other facets of my identity. The other layers, one by one, peeled off and tossed away. But in my room they survive. They are reminders of life. Of the progression of self. They live in harmony with each other, they are hidden underneath my newest version. My room holds secrets and stories and half thought out dreams and nightmares and plans left unfinished. At times it is shared, a place belonging to others and myself. At other times it stands alone. I am the only one who gives it meaning. I am the only one who allows it to exist. My room, like yours, like all of ours, is just a place. But it is a place that acts as a time capsule into other places, it is a place that holds possibility. It is a room. But it is also so much more.