Extol Summer 2020 | Page 76

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