An open house for the things I once thought I had to hide.
There is a small room tucked away inside me.
It is the place where I have spent more time than anywhere else. It is where I go to rest, but it is also the trash bin where I empty out everything ugly in me. And sometimes, it becomes a secret storage room where I carefully keep the things I am quietly proud of. For a long time, I kept that room obsessively locked. It was so private that there were times even I could not bring myself to open the door. For most of my life, the idea of letting anyone else see inside felt almost impossible.
But every now and then, life gives you a strange kind of courage.
After leaving the room untouched and in disorder for far too long, I finally began cleaning it out. Somewhere in the middle of it, I caught myself wondering:
Maybe it would be all right to leave the door open for a while.
The pieces I share here are small exhibits from my life. They are the messy, sometimes unpleasant history of this little room. Some things were left alone for so long that they began to rot. They smelled bad enough that I nearly threw them away altogether. Instead, I decided to leave them on display.
Because the truth is, this room was always a place I secretly wished someone would open without my permission. A place I wanted to hide forever, yet somehow also wanted to be discovered. No one but me ever knew what was inside. Of course they didn’t. So while I still have the courage, I’ve decided to leave the door open for a while—to whoever happens to wander in.
Thank you for accepting such an unexpected invitation. After all, an exhibition is nothing without someone to see it. A history is nothing without someone willing to read it. So thank you, sincerely, for giving meaning to these traces of mine that might otherwise have meant nothing at all.
As I warned you, what I write here may not always be useful. Some of it may weigh you down. Some of it may stir something up. Still, I hope there will be something here worth staying for. And to those of you willing to step inside this little open house with me, thank you for lending it a little of your courage too.
For now, I’ll leave it here.
— from the little room, Susan H.