I Don't Know Where the House is

but I know that it is mine

“There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.” Song of Myself Walt Whitman

There is a house inside my brain. It sits on the sharp edge of something which is neither different nor the same as the house. And if you go inside the house, which sometimes when I was younger I would brave it, you could look out into that darkness and feel a strange sense that you were looking at yourself though you couldn’t really explain why. I was uncomfortable inside this place because I could not tell you much about it, but I liked it because it was mine. Conflicted, always, to balance the tangible vs. the intangible. What can we take away and what will give us shelter? There were rooms like joy and loneliness but I did not know how they were decorated. Though I was in there often enough it was impossible to describe this home in any real way. I did not know what color the walls were, did not know where the cobwebs would be, couldn’t flick the light switch on because I didn’t remember which was for the hall and the other for the bathroom.

One afternoon I heard a voice coming from inside. I don’t know how old I was. I had been at someone else’s house, I was more comfortable there because I was not alone. In some ways too, it’s easier to have words for things that are not your own. I could tell you everything about the houses I had visited but I won’t. The voice was pointing in a kind of direction. I could not say then which way it was. I stood outside my house for a while before, I could no longer wait, and went in.

I have started this story many times. I cannot think of any other way. I’m not even sure what it all means but I am hoping it will all come together.

You might remember when I wrote that I wanted someone to see my belongings so they would understand me. That is because the house I have described stands for a kind of insecurity. There is a tangible thing in holding books and quotes, silverware and art, which feel as if they were taken from the home inside your brain. For all of high school, and well into college, I was someone who had the sense that everyone knew better than I did because they had words for their ideas while I only had feelings. Teachers would ask me if I liked a book and if the answer was yes, they wanted to know why. That was so often the impossible room that I couldn’t describe to them.

I’m most ashamed of the things which have no words. How often I find that is joy. Of course, it is a strange thing to say as someone who is constantly writing things down, constantly reading, constantly finding the precise image of something, and saying this is what it is to be me. There is a kind of counter curse to exposing so much of yourself that we were maybe never meant to know in the first place. Often when we know so much of each other, we tend really to see very little. I wanted to have the words for things because it terrifies me not to. To look out onto a dark edge and know that something is me, to hear that voice calling me in a direction and having to decide if I will go inside, if I will turn the light on. I’m scared, always, that if I can’t tell you what I mean then if I can’t show you this room of my joy, then it might not exist at all. That my unfounded, unrealized delight, is far less respectable than the homes which I have grown so uncomfortable visiting. I have overstayed my welcome.

There is a satisfactory idealistic image that if we compiled all our favorite things, items that make a room, then we could recreate the means of our conception. And in that regard, the things which often elude us, might be understood for their abstraction. For a long time, I wouldn’t date because my ex had left such a conceptual wound that the only conceivable way I believed anyone might love me was if I told them the entire story of what had happened between us. I couldn’t imagine anyone sitting through the whole thing and I knew there were important details I had likely forgotten, but I needed them to hear it so they knew why I acted the way that I did. 

Then, one afternoon I remember standing in a room at the MET made of artifacts from colonial America and it occurred to me that everyone who had ever been in that room, the people who preserved it, who made the items, who used them, and the other visitors, had all felt lonely. So too was I, that's why I was there. The sum of that room became connected. I did not know who they were, I could not see them, I was alone in that place looking at those things but I was aware of the feeling overcoming me and sure that it was real though I could not explain it. It had no name and I did not want to give it one. 

Not everything needs one. 

I am in the rooms now, but I won’t describe it to you. All I will say is that I have hoarded words in the hopes and ideas that filled me with a sense of knowing what the house looked like. I thought if I kept them in the back room of my mind eventually I would have a double exposure which left no risk to being truly exposed while opening me up to the scrutiny twofold. Yet the back room was not a back room at all. It was a paper mache version of myself that was fully formed, fully realized, but hollow just the same. 

You see the issue. Nothing can reach you entirely. There are corners of your inner world that might never be touched by the roundness of words and art. Yet even what we can’t explain connects us to one another in a finite way. Everyone has a border to themselves they can feel but not reach. Everyone has a room in their house they cannot describe. You are alone, which paradoxically means you are not alone at the same time. 

That voice too was always mine. It always knew which way to go. Always wanted me to look toward that place where the light can’t reach and accept it was mine even if I could not take it inside with me. All that time I was hoping that if I followed the voice of someone else, if I  stayed in someone else's house, then I wouldn’t be afraid because I was not alone. I could not choose my side of things because I never gave her one. How can you hear what you don’t believe is there? 

I have always been plagued by what people think of me. I am cursed to mourn how two-dimensionally people see you. I know when someone is outside the house. I want to invite them into that room that has no name, but most people have already guessed how you would decorate it. Most people have already made a decision on you from the color paint on the outside, and what rooms you’ve left the light on. There was never anything I could do.

The other truth is that I’m tired of being away from home. I miss what I can’t describe, I miss how I can’t describe it. At least I knew it was all mine. 

So I have heard the voice and I cannot forget it. I have been inside the joy of others, and this year I see there is only one choice. Do you see what it is?

As I get older my perception of myself has become so precise that in sharpening my image I can only be more blissfully aware of the far boundaries of my inner life that have no words. I still take the words of others inside with me. The contrast of art and experience, words to the self, hit my borders like a radar. Those precious places beyond my comprehension. This is where I begin this is where the words cease to reach me. I can feel both ends. Somewhere between here and your ending is a place. No one will ever go there but you. There are things about me I can’t explain. I hope I’ll always remain half a mystery even to myself. Not everything should be tangible in a translatable way. If you asked to see the wound I’d received I couldn’t give anything to you. No one lives there but me. 

In another room, one inside my mind, on the edge of all I am certain there is a voice that speaks like it is pointing out toward the faraway border. Trust me, this voice says this is what you need to do. This is where your joy is. I think this year I will listen. Isn’t this a life and love for the self? A silent request to be believed? To be listened to in a way that realizes there's another choice at all. The trust that this thing is there even if the space is only recognizable by that which is vacant? Maybe this year I will let myself take over. I don’t want to be so ashamed anymore. I don’t remember when I became so ashamed.

10 things I will no longer attempt to explain. Q&NA (questions and not answers)

1. Every time I listen to Love Story (Taylor’s Version) when she sings “Romeo save me I’ve been feeling so alone,” My eyes prick with tears. I don’t know why and I tried to figure it out since she rereleased but I am giving up my inner search.

2. When I read books I really like I physically gag. Not from disgust. Whenever I tried to figure out why in therapy I would also gag to the point that I am just going to accept that this is a part of feeling intensely.

3. I like Bridgerton unironically and I like season 2 better but also season 1 was better than season 2. (But also season 2 was better?) I don’t know. I suppose I never will!

4. The fog of visceral memory that happens in my head when I think back on certain periods of my life that I feel so intensely. I can never explain what precisely it feels like to remember and I think it’s okay that there might never be more than abstract visuals.

5. Why I’m not angry. I don’t know why I’m not and I know I should’ve been, but the moment is over. I will work on feeling appropriately in the future.

6. My “aesthetic” If there are words that perfectly capture my visual existence then I am doing something wrong!

7. What it’s like to be a twin. It's like: ))))@#($&&&@*((!)(@#&&@(!(@)($$&@*@**??

8. Why I like what I like. From grocery store romance to Emmy award-winning shows. They all serve a specific place in my joy. I can’t and won’t explain it much more than that.

9. My five-year plan. As if those ever come true!

10. My dream job. Writing. Not a specific kind of writing, but not that kind either! And not for this publication or any publication but maybe that one, but only if I can do XYZ (You see the issue.)

“Here is what the sea smells like. It is more texture than scent, because the sea is primarily made of two substances that have no smell of their own: water and salt. Salt has no smell, but makes the air sting, and so all of the other smells of the sea are layered upon the pang of salt. Water has no smell but instead a comfort. We feel moisture as life and so the smells of the ocean are layered upon the contentment of the water. Salt is treble and water is bass. I don’t know how I know this is true, but I know it is true. The sea smells like old wood and wet leaves. Like cold mud and warm stone. Like every creature who has ever lived in it, a churning graveyard and nursery. Like winds from the inland carrying the hot circulation of life and winds from the ocean carrying the distant froth of waves against ships and islands. Like gray, only more so. Like blue, only less so.” The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

Via

But isn’t every year for me? Even when I forget to say so. That I should enter into it and learn and do what I please. To be ravished and adored by the days ahead. Won’t I celebrate a birthday? Is it not then all for me? Everything. Everything! January 3rd, 2023 1:47 PM

The year is over and I’m inclined to believe it always will be. December 31st, 2022 10:32 AM

It seems counterproductive to make a mood board for the self on a newsletter which is entirely about the things which are not tangible. So just consider this the multitudes I contain. Some things have words and expression. I am willing to give them to you when they do! Click here to view !

Next week my paid newsletter comes out. We’re gonna talk about the very first words of the New Year that are haunting me and that trip to the MET I mentioned above. If that sounds like your thing, subscribe for five dollars.

If that’s not your thing, don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other somewhere groovy soon.

That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters

Here is My Twitter and my Instagram is @chloeinletters  where the DMs are checked, cared, and loved for.

My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go. 

My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me 

My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here! 

Here’s to Starbucks Fridays*, the dark thing that’s mine, and my house with everything in it

Love always,

Chloé