Within

Extroverts are social creatures, meant for socializing and sharing ideas. They are not made to sit in the house, staring at walls and being harassed by their own thoughts. But that’s exactly what happened to Osun, an extrovert and socializer extraordinaire. She had always been the center of attention, the life, and when she left, the death, of the party. Osun was never at a loss for words and attracted others like moths to a flame. It was almost like she was the personification of honey itself and others were her bees.  After all, why not? Osun was a beautiful woman who personified a lusty sensuality coupled with an airy wit and demeanor that both men and women alike found irresistible. People gravitated towards her, they found her entertaining but yet elusive, being that she was never at a loss for words and was comfortable in the spotlight. 

However, the spotlight was now gone. The virus had taken its toll, schools were closed, and everything but the essential stores selling the necessities were allowed to remain open. Osun, being a waitress, was relegated to the house, unsure if she was going to receive pay or not. The anxiety was paralyzing. The worry, which is arguably a misuse of imagination, had begun to set in and drove her mind towards a perpetual train of negative thoughts, akin to an elephant driver driving the elephant that was her mind into the abyss. What does one do when worry will not cease, but yet one is powerless to change the situation? 

“I guess it’s time for Netflix and relax.”, she thought as she opened her laptop and started browsing the many movies and shows available. Annoyed, she browsed for about 20 minutes until she settled on a 6-part documentary that she was sure would last her awhile. It did, she finished it that day! Then she took a nap, woke up, ate, thoughtlessly played with her hair for a few minutes, showered, dried her hair and then took another nap. A few hours go by and Osun wakes up, looks at the clock and thinks “It’s Still today!” 

One day goes by, then another, and another, and then a week, and then another. The days started to run into each other. With no one to talk to and having bored herself with movies, documentaries, YouTube videos and having made about 12 musical playlists and 9 Tik-tok videos, Osun was beginning to feel boredom set in. Having been strongly advised that going outside wasn’t safe, she began to be forced to confront something that she had been trying to avoid for a week or two-her own thoughts. God, were they repetitive!  Then boredom, with its tendency to nullify, slowly crept in. Being bored, in and of itself, has the ability to make one lethargic and desiring to relegate oneself to the couch. Interestingly enough, Osun found herself dozing off, her eyes getting heavy and bit by bit, they closed as her breathing began to become smaller and smaller, lighter and lighter, shorter and shallower…until she fell asleep.  

With a jolt, her eyes shot open and darted back and forth around her bedroom. They caught everything, the dust, the dirt and the cobwebs in the corner of the room, but more also they seem to be annoyed at arrangement of the furniture. “Why is that dresser there, at that angle?” she thought to herself. Clarity came and suddenly, Osun had a new mission, she had found a new purpose; she would rearrange the furniture! Her bedroom, her own intimate abode, her sacred sanctuary, where she slept, among other things, needed to be cleaned and the items in this inner holy of holies needed to be re-situated. She decided to start with that darn, gargantuan dresser. Like Laura the Tomb Raider, she knelt down next to it, and with all of the force her legs could muster she threw her upper body into the side of the thing and pushed.  To her amusement, it started to slide, with a grainy groan, like a stone that hadn’t moved in millennia. After a few attempts, the dresser had moved a bit and with another push, it moved a bit more. After the third try, Osun noticed a crack, an opening in the wall. She wouldn’t have known what to think if it had not been for the rush of air that rushed into the room and into her nostrils bringing with it a horrid stench. Osun’s nose would have liked to rebuke the smell, but Osun had always been a curious woman who could never settle with not knowing something. Now, before her was a true mystery, a hole in her bedroom wall where she had never known one to be before. But Osun was not one to just push the dresser back and leave it alone, so she decided to poke her head in. To her astonishment there was a hallway. A long, semi-dark hallway. Osun squinted through the darkness and after her eyes adjusted, she saw the silhouette of what looked like a wooden door. “Uh-uh”, she thought to herself, “I’m not doing it, nope, not happening.”

When one has nothing to do, one does what they wouldn’t have done before. So, on that note, Osun crawled through ragged-edge hole in her bedroom wall. Once inside, she stood and dusted off her orange leggings and bright yellow T-shirt, and slowly, with arms stretched out in front her to mitigate the darkness, started walking towards the wooden door. After walking for what seemed like ten feet, her immaculate fingernails graced the roughness of the wooden door she had seen just moments before. She let her left palm make contact with the wood, and then allowed it to slide down the ruff wood until she grasped what felt like a cold metal door knob. Once it was firmly in her hand, she began to slowly turn it and then gave it a slight push. The door began to move slightly, as she gave it a more forceful push the door gave way and opened.

The first thing Osun noticed was the thick tan carpet at her feet, the next thing, was the makings of an entire room. Osun’s couldn’t believe what lay before her eyes. The room had furniture, a bed and bright yellow walls that told her that this was obviously a little girl’s room.  Laying messily around the floor were dolls, toy cars and brightly colored clothes. Osun gasped as her eyes beheld a little girl, dressed in a bright yellow dress, sitting in the middle of the room happily combing a dolls hair. The girl didn’t look up and seemed not to notice a whole, grown Osun standing a few feet from her eyeballing her in shock. “Excuse me, who are you!” Osun screamed! The girl payed her no mind. She just kept combing her doll’s hair. Not far from the door was what seemed like the door to the girl’s bedroom. The girl, humming a tune that seemed eerily familiar to Osun, turned her head and looked straight through her. Osun stared back in awe. Osun was staring directly at her childhood self. 

It took what felt like forever for her mind to process what her mind knew she could not actually be seeing.  She squinted as one does when they don’t trust the image that their eyes were sending to the brain. Suddenly, the bedroom door flew open and a woman that Osun recognized as her own mother rushed in and began to berate the little girl. “This room is a mess!” Osun’s mother screeched. “You need to stop what you’re doing this instant and clean this room!” Osun watched as her mother poured on the criticism, while grabbing dolls and toys and began throwing them into a bin at the far side of the room. “Damn, messy girl!” continued the mother, “Listen to me very carefully, I’m going to walk out of this door and I will come back in an hour. If this room is not spotless and clean, you’re not leaving it, you’re not eating, as long as this room is a mess you will remain in it. Do I make myself clear?” The girl let a deep, sorrowful sigh escape her as her shoulders dropped in exasperation. Osun felt for the girl as memories of her mother flooded back into her mind. A deep reservoir of pain and disgust had been sitting in the back of her mind, previously untouched and hidden before, had begun to crack and the painful memories crept in. While she always agreed that cleanliness was important, she had always felt that her mother had been to harsh with the enforcement of her standards of it. Osun imagined how the girl must have felt, she empathized with the girl and how it must have felt to have to meet the expectations of a demanding mother. After the mother briskly exited the room, the little girl began to cry while picking up dolls by their hair and throwing them into the same bin her mother had thrown the others in before. With a heavy heart, Osun watched this ordeal, as notions of reality and what and where she was supposed be returned to the forefront of her mind. None of this should have actually been happening. With that thought, Osun shook her head vigorously and went to slam the wooden door shut, planning to return immediately to her real room. 

At this point, Osun’s expectation was that she would turn around, creep back through the darkness and find the hole in the wall. But when she turned around the hallway wasn’t there. It had vanished and before her was another room. This, wasn’t a girl’s room, but a young woman’s apartment. She recognized the apartment as her own, the one she had shared a few years ago with a guy that she used to date. Memories of him invaded her mind. She remembered how handsome he was, how tall he was, and most importantly, that he was well-employed and drove a bright red Lexus convertible. The apartment they rented together was comfortable, it wasn’t as big as she had wanted, but, hey, it was theirs.  As she looked around what she remembered to be their kitchen, she saw her old self, only a few years younger and dressed in a pair of shorts and a halter top. What struck her as odd was the well of tears that her younger self seemed to be trying to hold back. 

“You don’t love me” her old self sniffled, fighting back the tears. “Why won’t you tell me the truth?  Just say it. You don’t think I’m beautiful, you don’t even talk to me, you just ignore me.” Confused, Osun was trying to put the pieces together.  While she saw herself sitting in the kitchen, she figured her old self must have having an argument with her then boyfriend. He must have been in the next room, trying his best to not engage with her, being his usually non-communicative self. “Whatever! Fine, if you don’t love me, then I don’t love you.  But you know what?  I bet you love your little friend that keeps liking your pictures on Instagram! Fine, whatever, I guess I’m just not pretty enough for you, but can you please respect me enough to JUST SAY IT!” At this point, Osun was shocked at how pathetic she looked. She didn’t remember herself being so dramatic, so weak, so over-the-top. Her lover had yet to enter the picture. Osun imagined that he was probably in the next room sitting on the couch playing some video game, trying his best to not have an argument. Some sound, whatever it was, announced that he was coming into the room to finally half-engage in the conversation. Osun’s old self, lifted a hand to wipe a few tears from her cheeks and then turned her head with all of the attitude that she could muster to stare down her man. As Osun turned her head towards the person entering the kitchen, a sharp bolt of disbelief shot through her body from head to toe. Once again, the relationship between what her eyes were seeing and what her brain could process couldn’t be trusted. 

“You’re right. I don’t love you; I never did.” Said another Osun, standing in the flesh staring at the other Osun. The three Osuns stood in what felt like some type of twilight zone. Two, in a relationship, the third staring at the other too, completely unable to process, believe, or understand what was happening. 

“Ouch!” Osun yelled as her head hit the wall behind her. Luckily, her soft, long dreadlocks had cushioned the impact some. Blinking rapidly, her eyes began to take in what was her real room, the apartment bedroom that she had set out to clean and re-decorate earlier. Her mind began to wonder what type of dream she had just had.  She began to analyze all that she had just seen. She wondered why she had just seen her childhood self, followed by her self in what seemed to be a relationship with herself.   Was that child her? Why was she in a relationship with herself and why didn’t she love herself? Did she even fall asleep? Or had she fallen into some meditative state. The effects of cabin fever must have truly done a number on her.  

Slowly, it started coming back to her. Her mind raced around memories of a demanding mother that made her feel not enough and small. She suddenly saw with crystal clarity a boyfriend who she had given some much time, energy and so much of herself to, while he never seemed to love her in the ways that she needed. She glanced at the dresser that she thought she had moved only to see it in the same place, unmoved. The stark realization that she had never even moved began to creep in. She began to see that her being stuck inside for so long, unable to go without, caused her to mentally dive within. Her mind gently nudged her in the direction of the truth. The child was her, her own inner child, that still remained within her, still sad, still exasperated and still the shivering little girl who felt small in the midst of gargantuan expectations and demanding authority. She had never analyzed her relationships within the context of them emblematic of her relationship with herself, and never with the stunning conclusion that she never really loved herself enough to allow herself to get into a healthy relationship that was free of drama and piss-poor communication. 

This was only the beginning. The quarantine was nowhere in sight of being lifted and the endless source of Netflix movies and cleaning seemed like mere distractions now. Osun realized that this was simply the beginning. Her very own self seemed infinitely more fascinating and she was eager crawl back down that hole into the depths of her very self. There was so much more to know and so much more find out.