Dream House

I was ten years old when I first wanted to be an architect. At the time, my immunization documents were completed to join my mother in the United States finally. My grandmother and I went to the embassy so I could get an interview as the final step to getting my visa approved. I remember sitting in what felt like the most oversized living room I had ever been in. I was way too short for my age, so I felt a miniature size green army doll. I looked up and could not look down for what felt like hours. The detail had me mesmerized. The walls were ivory white with high ceilings and columns in every corner. I felt as though I was in a house within a house. Squared tiles hung from the ceiling as it stood still. I don’t remember every detail because memories of me freaking out over the first time I got my period drowns it. I left the embassy with the lingering thought that I want to build something like this one day. To me, whoever could create something so big had a mental capacity most lack. The patience that older generations don’t seem quite to grasp. To me, whoever built that embassy had no fears, and I also wished to lack in that department.

At twelve, I found land to build my embassy. I bought land on top of a hill isolated from the rest of the neighborhood. I was intrigued. On this hill, I could build a house as big as the embassy. I collected the necessary tools and installed the foundation of the house. By the end of my twelfth year, my embassy was complete. A home, made of glass so that the sun and moon could shine through. As many rooms as necessary to never run out of space. A kitchen, big enough for ten Gordon Ramsays to cook without interfering with one another. A living room big enough to host more than eight full families, however full they may be. I built the house of my dreams surrounded by nature and anything I ever wanted.

It is very lonely living in such a big house by oneself. I had initially built the house for my family, but it seems as though a year after moving in, everything started to crumble. Rooms were no longer what they were. The walls turned from white to gray. The dark cloud over the house grew larger. The flowers in the yard ceased to bloom. The birds stopped harmonizing as the leaves on the trees fell. I was left with a house I no longer recognized. Sounds from the living room, once laughter and joy, were replaced by desperate cries and unloving words. The paintings on the wall faded. It became quiet and dull. The kitchen once filled with odors, so gracious one could be full with a sniff now filled with recipes of my mother’s words. Her disappointment simmers on the stove. In the fridge, in alphabetical order, everything I had done, that seemed unruly to her. Odors of regret permeated the whole house, as my bothers seasoned my already salty wounds with the pepper they chewed. At the dinner table sat my grandmother with a plate of guilt she had put over my head. They enjoyed themselves as I watch my house deteriorating from under my feet.

Out in the backyard, the flowers I had once planted were replaced by the footsteps of my demons engaging in a war to see who could control the house. By the pond stood my depression, ready to drown me in my sorrows, waiting for the perfect moment to rid me of my life jacket and watch me disappear under the clear water. On the tree branches hung the memories my past waiting to chain me to my insecurities. They stood there and waited until I passed to surprise me with a noose around my neck, suffocating me with memories I wished to forget. I sat in my pool chair as I watched them banter. The darkness behind me whispered sweet nothings to my soul. In my bed lay the loneliness I can feel waiting for me to come into bed with her. She laid effortlessly as I shook in her arms. She whispered to me, “No one can love you as I can.” With every word she said, my tears leaked a bit faster. My masks are found in the closet, for each emotion I wished to recognize, feel, display, and comprehend but could not. So, I have a mask for each emotion that I could need to show. In my theatre room, I played a movie repeating in the fourth scene—the lousiest movie any eyes could ever watch.

Throughout my house lay pieces of my soul ripped out of my being, on the floor uncleaned as if they were just sparks of dust not to worry about. I built a house isolated from the world to feel as though nothing was out of my control. I made a house on top of a hill to feel safe. Untouched by the world, oblivious to everything. I built the perfect suicide box in my head. I fear the entrance to the house I have created. My thoughts have a habit of picking me last, and they will continue to do so for as long as they have power, which I could never give or take away from them. I built a house in my head to run away from my demons, and they followed me to my bedroom. I built a house on top of a hill with glass walls, yet no one ever sees the turmoil—the turbulence between the walls. Every maladjusted thought is a painting on the wall. I built a house on top of a hill with a dug grave in the backyard.