White Walls

I’ve never been bothered by white walls. It’s not that I think they’re nice or anything, I just don’t notice them. Everyone else seems to think it’s a problem when I have plain white walls. They say, “Don’t you want to put anything on the wall?” as if there’s just one, and not four, or, “Don’t you want to put any posters up? Or some art? You like art, don’t you?” And I just look at them, and give them my fake little smile, or say, “yeah, I want to, but...” and manage to drift off the sentence into something else entirely. They say I’m “scared of commitment.” Maybe they’re right. But I don’t think I’m scared. I think I’m more “sick and tired” than scared. The real question that goes through my mind when they say all these things is, “Don’t they know how hard that is to take down when it’s time to move?” But deep down I know it’s not that they don’t know, it’s that they’re not thinking about all that. They haven’t had to move five times in the past four years. Instead of thinking in terms of years I’ve been alive, I think in terms of houses I’ve lived in. I’d say something like, “Oh wow, I haven’t heard this song in the past three houses!” and people will just start laughing. They think I’m making some sort of joke about moving, or how many times I’ve moved, but I’m not joking. I just use space to recognize time. Otherwise, time just goes by and I don’t notice it. Hence the white walls.

In the past few houses, whenever I start to decorate or finally get around to setting up my room the way I like, that’s when we’ve gotten a message that it’s time to move. I don’t think I’m cursed or anything, I just think God has a funny way of showing me that it’s not time to “settle down.” That it’s not meant for me. That I’m not meant for the “settling down” life. My past few crushes have all “settled down” in their own lives, and my friends are all trying to do the same, and it seems like everywhere I look, everyone’s doing the whole “settling down” thing and trying to get me to do so, too.

At my last house, I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the first time, and bawled like a baby at the end when Paul starts talking all that sense into her, because I felt like he was dragging me, too. Up until that point, I hadn’t seen it his way at all, either. I really didn’t think anything Holly had done was all that extreme, given the circumstances. But I guess the whole not-giving-the-cat-a-name thing and the not-buying-any-furniture-for-the-apartment (for the record, that apartment looked pretty furnished to me, okay) is bothersome to people in the same way that everyone is bothered by my white walls.

The truth is, I’m a maximalist at heart, and if I had a magic wand, I would put up paintings, photographs, and posters galore. Maybe I will, someday.