The Room with a Thousand Eyes

Blonde tendrils fall into my face as I write feverishly in a palm sized pink diary with a gold heart lock. Raspberry lips toss my tongue and chin back as the hairs wave away from the blue lined pages.

‘Dear Diary, Today was the worst!’

I write feverishly, frantically, ferociously on the page. I push so hard my bicep trembles under the weight of my pen. All of the inner turmoil bubbles to the surface. I am ready to tell all. However, I pause, eyes closed to ensure the silence and reassure myself that I am in fact alone.

I do not feel like I am alone…

My gut flares in response.

It is me and my diary in the quiet of my blue bedroom. My eyelids pressed together so hard my head hurts yet somehow I am being watched in a room with a thousand eyes.

Goose- bumps and bumble on my forearms as my brows furrow from the rage of todays personal news. Information I intended to spill out on the pages in front of me.

“I want to leave this place.” It’s not a simple thing to write or to feel, but it’s true enough for me.

My nose twitches in an effort to restrain the drip drops of sadness pouring from my face.“I hate it here” the pen point end digs so hard into the page it etches black ink into the unwritten pages underneath. A phantom chin rests on my shoulder and I jump out of my skin burning my writing hand on the light bulb above the sprawled pages.

“WHO IS THERE!” I say instinctively, covering the 2 sentences laying openly on the page below.

Silence, again. A deceptive silence. Betrayal thickens the field around me. I don’t know how the eyes always know when I am writing. You see, every time I sit to write, someone somehow steals my words. I write, and the pages disappear from the book, like invisible ink or torn pages with no seam.

Forces slip into my room when it is unattended, and their ghostly fingers morph into keys to unlock my secrets. Even when I think it’s safe to share my most personal thoughts .. Even when I safely tuck the words in scrolls and bind them by lock and key, an evil  intruder breaks the chain.

Each time I start to write, I am exposed.

I don’t understand why MY words, my writings, MY experiences are open to such scrutiny! Something as simple as my written out feelings are flipped and turned on their head leaked out into global air. Browbeaten by my own hand, as poems once sincere are slipped into sinister snake- like mouths. Words which once whispered my hearts deepest plea, are now unrecognizable letters dangling in the air rearranged to cause damage and harm in my name.

I don’t know how it happens, but it always does. The words are swallowed by snake mouths who spit out the venomous stories throughout the land.

My desperate need to release my heart of all the heavy things it holds, whipped into an unfamiliar frenzy and used against me to justify my punishment.
Because how dare I think those things?
How dare I speak those things?
How dare I FEEL those things?

And once the diary is delivered by the eyes to The Keeper, I am banished to the room with a thousand eyes.

I am horrified every time my writing is siphoned from safe places and spit back out to the world without my permission.
I am terrified there is no safe space to feel, to be, and to know without being disciplined back into vapid,  robotic order.
I am mortified to recognize the infinite cycle that keeps me frozen at blank diary pages, both wanting nothing more to write and yet being terrified to be seen.

My right thumb runs a softened pad over the burn. Red like my cheeks full of shame and sorrow. Burnt like my soul by the bottomless wound of ancient treason.
How long has it been since I attempted to write my way home?
How many lifetimes have I spent trying to get the words out of me?
How long have I been trapped in the room of a thousand eyes?
Is there any way to release me of this fate?

Time and time again, my truth, uprooted from prying eyes and sold to the highest bidder.
Will I ever be safe to get the words out of me?
Will I finally explode if I continue to hold them in?
What’s a girl with a pink diary, a pen, and an endless ocean of feeling to do?

It is not yet safe, to write, to feel, to know, and to heal.
It is not safe to withhold these things either.

They - the eyes - they know. They notify the planetary authorities and sell my soul (out) time and time again.

I can see their presence on the page, the paper color tinted from bright white to a hazy yellow to match their impure intention.

I see it. Thumbprints of persistent ghosts who have nothing better to do than pry open the bolt and swallow the key.

The words, inside of me,  they eat me alive… and I need to get them out.
Or I’ll forget what they are.

The eyes, they know this. and I know when they’ve intruded me. Don’t they see it too? The light, it’s like a film? It’s a lie.
But it seems they’d rather bury me in the caverns with my thoughts than be exposed.

They are the evil ones, not me. But I can not seem to remember that,
If only I could write that down.

I won’t remember that tomorrow… but I can not write it down today.

I rub the scorched hand against my head where I am rolled up inside my own thoughts, and the eyes press into my neck.
I shut the book and toss it against the wall,
“LEAVE ME ALONE!!”

The eyes have won again,
And the words remain buried inside to torment me another day.
But the eyes, they blink around the room.
It is impossible to be invisible and witnessed at the same time.

As I sit looking in on the memory of a thousand eyes, I embrace my inner child who is desperate to be invisible.
She has been through so much. Her words were minced and used against her. It’s no wonder writing feels like such a cruel place.
I honor her, in all she endured.
I honor her love of writing is also a terrible place to be.
There are people who were eager to use her world against her to keep her in line.
She is me and I am her and together we embrace this maddening truth hidden in the room with a thousand eyes.

I honor the version of her that hides away
I honor the version of her that is longing to be seen.
I honor the opposite of truths that can exist at one time.

I am the eyes, I am the child, I am the light, I am the way in, I am the way out.

It’s safe now my love, come out and write.