SO MANY SHELVES:
A First-Person Account
BY MIRANDA MCDONALD
The bookcase was empty. As I stood in front
of it, I tried to imagine all the books I would one
day place on its many shelves. I tried to picture
all the beautiful, little things I would first arrange
and then rearrange several times before deciding
that they were in just the right spot.
I will put all of my favorite things on this
bookcase. It will be beautiful, and I will smile
every time I see it.
However, at the moment, all I could see was
the emptiness spanning the length of each shelf.
“Spending six dollars on coffee seems
ridiculous,” my mom said as she opened the
box that was sitting on the tiny, wooden table
beside her. The table was the only thing dividing
the kitchen and living room area in my new
apartment. We had moved the last of the boxes
containing all of my belongings into the space
that day, and she had noticed that I didn’t have
a coffee maker.
“I like going to the local coffee shop in the
morning,” I quickly replied. My gaze still fixed
on the white bookcase.
I held the book I was currently reading in
both hands. My fingertips skimmed its cover.
The texture of the leather and the weight of its
pages felt familiar. It was the only thing that was
recognizable in this unfamiliar space that currently
surrounded me.
There are just so many shelves to fill, I thought.
“You have a lot of natural light to work with,”
my mom said. She was now standing behind me.
“The light does make the place feel a lot bigger
than my last apartment,” I replied. Though, both
spaces were about the same square footage.
It was just a few days prior that I decided to break
my lease, pack up my life, and move into this new
space. I was still emotional about the decision. My
old apartment was my first home after the divorce.
I had hoped to heal there. I wanted to rediscover
who I was there, and I loved the window in the
kitchen. Its frame was large enough to touch the
ceiling. Its structure was sturdy enough for me to
sit in, and in the mornings I would do just that
while letting the sun pour in on my face.
However, the walls in my old place began to feel
heavy. They had seen and heard too much. They
had witnessed the many days I sat on my kitchen
floor, sobbing. With my head in my hands and my
knees pulled into my chest, I begged for it all to
end. When these moments hit, nothing felt real.
Only sadness. So, numbness became my closest
friend. She was the one I could turn to. I felt she
was the only one who truly understood me. I
welcomed her with my arms wide-open, pushed
most of my other friends away, and entered into
a relationship with a completely broken man. I
was broken, too.
During that time, no matter who I was around
or what I was doing, I felt alone. But numbness
was always there to take me by the hand. We
would dance through the long hours of the night,
dangerously close to the water’s edge of that deep
and vast ocean called depression. Until one day,
hand in hand, we jumped into its watery depths
and sank ever so slowly to the bottom. For a while,
it became easy to stay in this dark place. The shore
above me had just become so very small and now
felt out of reach.
It wasn’t until the day he said he was leaving
that I finally felt the warmth of the sun on my face
again. I was standing in the kitchen window with
my back to him. Pearl Jam’s album Ten spinned on
my record player. It was an album we had listened
to on repeat while driving back from Kansas City a
few months prior. I flew out to meet him while he
was on the last leg of a two-month road trip. He
was a writer suffering from a momentary case of
writer’s block and a lifelong battle with depression.
He hoped the excursion would cure him of both.
I didn’t face him as he spoke. I couldn’t. I just
stood in the kitchen window with my gaze fixed
on my neighbor’s dog. His name was Jake and
he was standing by the fence in the backyard,
barking at something that was just out of view.
Tears rolled out of my eyes and soaked my cheeks,
but I never turned to look at him.
“I am moving back to Chicago,” he said. “What
did you expect? You always knew I was going to
leave. I am not your father. You cannot save me.”
---
I never knew my biological father. He passed
away right before my sixth birthday. I only
remembered that he was always barefoot during
the summer months. There was a clothesline that
stood at the top of the hill in my grandmother’s
backyard. I always chased my cousin through the
maze of cotton hanging from its wooden structure.
He always parked his little red truck at the bottom
of that hill. And my grandmother would always
yell at him from the side porch.
“You are supposed to wear shoes when you
are outside,” she would scold.
“I like the way the earth feels on the bottom of
my feet,” he would yell back.
---
74 EXTOL : SUMMER 2020