Leave Me Be

Word count: 1764
Status: Complete

    Being a middle child in a six-person family is claustrophobic. My parent's had four daughters, and I am the third.  My oldest sister Janiece went to college, got herself an Asian boyfriend who could cook, and got plenty of well-paying jobs that caused both of them to settle in Northern Virginia.  That is what kids are supposed to do.  Janay, the secondborn, had failed to move out of the house too many times to count.  Then she had Savion out of wedlock and still lives with my parents.  My younger sister Jacole followed me to Charlotte and goes to a university on the western side of the city, far enough away that we hardly meet in person.
    We haven't all lived in the same house since 2004, but I remember those days.  Little privacy exists in a single story 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath brick house. It was always two people to a bedroom, Janiece and Janay, Jacole and I.  All the rooms flow into one another: laundry room, kitchen, the hallway.  The hallway branched to the livingroom on the right, the green room dead ahead, and the bathrooms and bedrooms to the left.  My parents don't believe in closed doors. It’s their house. Plus, my parents' room is attached to Jacole and I's bedroom, because they hadn’t planned to have three other children.
    The place to find me outside of meals, TV time, and twelve-hour comas is in the Green Room. The only thing green about the room is the dark carpet. A treadmill stacked with lonely toys greets those who enter. To the left of the doorway is the keyboard my mom practices on for choir rehearsals. The cramped room houses up to three desktop computers on two fake wood desks. There I spend twelve or more hours wading through anime videos or playing some kind of game to this day.
    Without video games and the Internet, I can't see myself existing.  I love my computer enough to have named him. Yes, a “him,” because I find it more pleasing to sit in front of a guy all day than a girl. “Shibuya,” I call him, thanks to my escalating obsession with Asia.  Aside from my discovery of Asian cartoons, I have always been interested in the idea of the virtual world where I be who and what I want.  
    At home and in school, I was known as the shy, unusually artistic bookworm. Most of the online games I play were either first created by an Asian company before they allowed an American one to host it in English or it dealt with Asian themes like martial arts and chi. Shibuya allows me to be Juliadoll the werefox or bronze-skinned Aja Stonhert the Warrior or Yuferana the wielder of the Chinese Glaive and more.  I'm not barred by anyone's definition and judgment.  I have the option to play with people around the world, or I could ignore them and fight solo.
    Currently, Savion, now four-years-old, comes in to bother me. Everyone else calls me to them, knowing I have to mentally yank myself from the virtual world before I can deal with reality. Few things irritate me more than to be forced into conversation, especially when that person uses botched sign language because he can barely speak English. I've only known this thin illusion of solitude.
    During my second semester of college in 2011, I found myself alone in a bedroom. My roommate Lauren left because of the fifteen-hour drive separating her from her family as much as from figuring out that Queens University of Charlotte was not where she would find her dream career. After the initial sharp shock of abandonment and being the sole resident of one of the four largest rooms in Belk Dorm, I freaked out.
    I was accustomed to hearing someone's breath on the other side of the room, even if it was a stranger's.  The first night Lauren and I spent at college, I slept easily, until the fire alarm woke us at 4am.  I pretended it was Jacole, like usual.  I didn't got through the waterworks scene like most freshman do when they are separated from their families.  I wasn't bothered by the five-hour distance.
    When I no longer had that link to home, I was wired like a guitar string the seconds before it snapped for the first month. The days passed quietly, since the sounds on the main hallway didn't carry down the offshoot the room is on. The nights were worse. Lauren's curtains, a gift, blocked what little light the moon could thrust past the tree directly outside the window. The air conditioner grunted periodically from across the room into the suffocating darkness that was only relieved by the block of white light from beneath the door. The light hit her bed, casting a humped figure across the wall. Many a night I trembled until sleep jumped me.
    After a month or so, I began to enjoy the solitude. I forced Lauren's bed against the indented wall adjacent to the window and the air conditioner's discomfort faded into the background. I spread my meager belongings across the desks, beds, and closets, which only made the room look even emptier. I popped as much popcorn as I desired. I went clubbing from ten ‘til two and didn't have to tiptoe when I got back at three in the morning. I slept when the mood took me. I did the Cha Cha Slide, the Electric Slide, and the Cupid Shuffle by myself without shame. I would have walked around the joint naked if the idea had occurred to me. It was a glorious four months.
    Home is where college freshmen aren't. I, now a sophomore, still live in a freshman dorm. A freshman dorm is a daycare full of children in need of potty training, instruction in good hygiene, and manners in general. On Saint Patrick's Day night, the little boys came bumbling up the stairs. They used the walls to propel themselves to their rooms. There was no need to sniff their end of the hall to know they were drunk. Later, I learned from a fellow sophomore that she saw one of the boys peeing in the hallway, his manhood painted shamrock green. Sadly, that was not the first time, nor the last, the hallway has been used as a toilet.
    My current roommate is Emmie who was inseparable from Lauren and me. In hindsight, I should have given it more thought, since we're complete opposites. Emmie lives an organic lifestyle while I am doused in sugar showers. She hates the scent of popcorn, and I secretly can't stand her stinky soups. I don't enjoy the abusively bright overhead light, or the sun for that matter, and she doesn't like the darkness of the Cave, Lauren and I's creation.  Don't be mistaken, we have our giggly times and shared ideas.  But I live in half of a cinderblock room my parents rent so I have a place to rest my head at night. It's not home.
    I asked Emmie what she thinks of home. "Where my family is. Houses change all the time. People change all the time," she said, standing in sweats in the middle of our room. I can't relate to that. Houses and people, yes, but I don't see the family part. Emmie is always Skype-ing some family member or planning to visit them over the summer. I've been to, at most, three family reunions in my life. I can't miss what I don’t remember.
    I interviewed Martin, the white-haired library manager with a very outside voice. He's the epitome of a 21st century renaissance man, and he reminds me of my father. Both love to build, whether it’s welding or screwing parts together. They sure don't make handy men like them anymore, at least none under the age of thirty. "Home to me is a geographical place where I feel comfortable, energized, and at peace," Martin said after careful thought and dictation. I've had a taste of that home, though fleeting, and I want it again.
    I don't know where in the world I'll build my home. I could end up in Korea living with an Asian Martin/father-esque hunk who loves to cook or working for Electronic Arts as a 3D character modeler in California. That's my main dream.  I might be delightfully single or married with five adopted teenagers.  I like kids when they have all the basics down: writing, potty trained, feed themselves, do choirs, follow directions.  All I need is the speck of peace among the storm of people. I’m like a smartphone. The longer you use it, the sooner it’ll need to be charged. I must be able to retreat and recover from too many social interactions with in-the-flesh beings.
    When I'm at home, I don't want to be wanted.  Once I enter, I don't want to be bothered until I must leave again for school or work.  I handle all of my business with people before I go back, that way, I won't have to budge from my cocoon.  Live people can't be ignored like their virtual counterparts.  They take offense, hold grudges.  With virtual people, I can run away and face them when I'm ready.  When I'm home, it's about me.
    In this place, I want to enter Cave mode at will. I want that unforgiving fireball in the sky banished for my presence. I only need the light of a single tungsten bulb. No shoes will be permitted into the room, for I want it to remain disease-free. No country or top favorites radio will be heard; only my techno, Asian rock and pop, and the occasional metal track. I will let loose and get jiggy with imaginary dance partners. I need that personal space, but with the option to rejoin the world, at least when I'm in danger of being eaten by an insect the size of a small dog.  Or when I feel lonely, such a rare occasion.
    Overall, home is me alone in the center surrounded by people I enjoy the company of, whether they are my family or friends. I'm not alone in my need to escape. Jennifer, a friend I sit beside in Digital Photography, shares my sentiments. As we ignored the lecture on motion blurs in Photoshop, she said, "[Home is] a place for rest every day, someplace safe where no one will bother you."  This, I agree with wholeheartedly.