Shattered Houses
She was a mess of passions pulled in different directions. She was not meant to be a single note of singular purpose. This was torture, this abundance of possibilities. How could one life hold it all?
There was a house inside her.
It was old, with endless rooms, doors leading to doors leading to more doors. The house felt scattered… No, shattered, into a hundred rooms.
She wondered, “Do I recognize these rooms?”
She did. They were hers. She knew these rooms very well.
One had a desk, with a typewriter, papers stacked and ink spilled dreamily everywhere. It was the writer’s room. Another had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with old literature and forgotten or abandoned treasures. It was the reader’s room. And one more, which had a lonely desk flickering with lights, unread emails and a dying computer. It was the engineer’s room.
But there were other rooms as well. Rooms she used less. The artist’s room which smelled like paint, musician’s room that was dusty, traveler’s room with its half-packed suitcase, a baker’s room rich with cinnamon and vanilla, and so on…
She lived in all of them, and yet belonged to none.
Some days, she was a poet, ink-stained and dreaming. Other days, she was a philosopher, her mind spinning in circles. At night, she imagined the faces of strangers she would never meet. And in the mornings, she walked through the city, longing to fly and leave forever.
One night from her apartment balcony, fingers buried in her hair, elbows resting on the railings, she watched the city getting ready for the dusk. Most often the city was filled with singular lives. A doctor driving to the hospital to save a life. A baker in the pastry shop, his hands knowing the weight of dough better than anything else in this world. A teacher returning from school with assignments to grade.
She envied them. She envied their singularity. She envied their certainty. She envied those who walked a straight path without looking back.
Inside her, the house groaned. All the doors swung open, calling to her.
“One life is all I have and how can one life contain so much?” she murmured.
The house let out a sly laugh. “Ah, that question again!”
They stood there silently for a minute. Then the house spoke, “There are plenty of houses like me, we live in people like you, who have too much inside them. The ones who cannot choose. The ones who are many people in one life.”
She looked inside those waiting rooms again and asked, “But what happens to these unused rooms in the other houses?”
The house sighed, “Most remain empty, gathering dust and darkness.” Then after a pause, it added, “But some get lit sometimes. Then some people live in all of them. Imperfectly. Messily. But they live these different lives.”
She breathed heavily and replied, “I tried. I tried to be only a writer, only a thinker, only a reader, only an engineer, only a baker, and many other things... But the moment I settle, the other rooms rise in protest, demanding my attention.”
“This is torture, this abundance of possibilities,” she whispered.
The house was quiet for a moment. Then it spoke with a warm voice.
“Why do you fight it?” the house asked.
“You speak as if you are broken, as if being many is a curse,” the voice continued.
“Isn't it?” she exhaled.
The house laughed. “Who said you must choose?”
She frowned. “The world! The need to be something definite. To have a purpose.”
The house replied, “Perhaps you are meant to be all of it, sometimes a philosopher, sometimes an engineer, sometimes a writer, and sometimes something else entirely.”
She then knew, the rooms would not stop existing just because she lived in only one most times. Because she was not one thing, never had been.
Then she smiled, a slow and understanding grin at the corner of her mouth. The rooms of her house were not prisons but endless possibilities. Each one held a different version of herself, waiting to be lived. Wanting to be lived.
She walked through them now, touching the walls with appreciation, no longer feeling the desperate need to be only what each room demanded of her, but instead feeling the joy of knowing she could be more. She realized these rooms weren’t competing for her attention but complementing each other.
The house seemed to expand with her acceptance, feeling abundant. Feeling full.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the house, and for the first time, she truly felt at home in all her rooms.
A Note to You
What rooms exists within you? Are you, too living in a house of many possibilities? I’d love to hear about the different facets of your life - the rooms you frequently visit, the ones gathering dust, and the ones you’re afraid to enter. Perhaps you’re also struggling with the pressure to choose just one room, one path, one purpose.
Share your story with me by replying to the email or leave a comment below.