That house. My house. You know, the old rickety Money Pit that takes up one-sixth of the block? If those walls could talk, what would they say? Would they finally comfort me after all these fearful years? They owe me that much.
Growing up in that house was what I'd imagine walking the halls of the Hotel California to be. "Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice, and she said, 'we are all just prisoners here, of our own device.'" OK, so no mirrors on the ceiling, but we sure were prisoners of our own devices. But somehow the house itself made us prisoners in our own skin. For years I thought life was lived always looking over your shoulder, always on guard for a waterbug aka cockroach to come flying off one of those menacing walls.
It makes me wonder just how much influence a physical structure has to do with your overall evolution as a human being. I grew up fearful and distrusting because of, albeit among other things, that house. It taught me early that safety was a luxury. The walls at 1306 Arp still haunt me in my sleep. Why don't they just say it already? Their stoicism is maddening. After all, it's been twenty-three years. But, how did those brooding walls influence my decisions, my life choices? I know that I got out as soon as I turned 18 and never looked back.
I can still remember the floors. They creaked with every step. That made any teenage shenanigans impossible. Sleepovers generally failed. No one could sleep in that big, drafty bedroom of mine. The walls creaked too. The big Sycamore trees outside creaked. The faucet creaked. The doors creaked. The windows. Everything creaked.
Although, I did have a summer and a winter bedroom. As a kid, I thought this was so cool, when in reality it had more to do with essentials such as heat in the fresh winters and air-conditioning in the deep East Texas, sweltering summers.