Melisa Miller, Week Seven, Story 11

Casting Shadows

My mother’s bedroom window stays closed far more often than it should. The chiffon curtains are always drawn and the fluorescent light from the ceiling radiates glare on everything. When I was little I wouldn’t have given it a second thought but now that the child is removed from me I can’t stand to bear that much light. Sometimes when I get up in the morning I keep the lights off while I’m drying my hair in the bathroom. I’ve even done my make-up in the dark. You don’t need much light to see. In comes my mother with a look on her face edging on disgusted that I would ever do something as crazy as put my make-up on in the dark.
“It wasn’t really that dark” I tell her. The argument already useless now that she’s turned the light on and wouldn’t hear my argument if I sent a subliminal message to her head. I turn to look in the mirror and every imperfection on my face, every split end in my frizzy my hair can be seen in that grotesque neon light. I head off to school flattening my hair down every ten minutes.
It’s such a calming sensation looking into the mirror and only seeing the contour of your cheek and the lashes of your eye. The delicate pale light that rests on the side of your face, carried in by the morning mist outside, it’s affirmed by the deep sense of content in your half asleep body at six o’clock in the morning. But some people turn on the lights before they even see themselves.
The problem carried into college. I’d fill my room with twinkling little string lights, they’d adorn my desk and hang from my bed and with all the rest of the lights off they would illuminate the contours of my room, until my roommate would barge in a flip on that damned fluorescent light on in the ceiling. Her sloppy pile of clothing-homework-knick knack soup would appear before me and I’d have to leave the room to study. She was so eager to see everything in that room; she couldn’t see anything my lights made it into. Sure, some people would call me a born decorator or else a strange night owl. It’s not the night I crave, it’s not the darkness. It’s the reality of not knowing. The contradiction of light and dark, how they adapt to your needs and shroud your circumstances in color.