My closet is the place I go to every time I shut my eyes.
It is the very epitome of soft: fairy lights on the walls, a floor covered in mattresses and bedsheets, a window I can sit by to watch the world pass me by, bathed in blue light, and the loud humming of a ceiling fan in the background. It is cool from the remnants of the air conditioner that was on, and the faint sound of music often trickles in through the closed window.
In my closet, the past is real. Every nostalgia-induced daydream I have, every fantasy to go back to a time when everything was simpler, comes to life here. When I miss something, crave a time that I used to take for granted, it is here, in my closet, for me to go back to.
The way my father used to tuck me into bed every night. Sulking as I entered school in the morning, but my face lighting up as soon as I saw my friends. The time my mother held me as I sobbed. The time I first met my best friend.
It is all here, with me, in my closet, to look back on, and smile and cry, and realize how it all changed me. My closet brings my nostalgia back to life, and in it, I do not have to leave behind the past that made me.
In it, I am surrounded by what created me, but I am still making new memories that will fill it up even more.
Saachi, 19
Pansexual, Ciswoman
Student
Almaarii 