I wasn’t sure how long it had been—hours, most likely, that I had been staring at the fan on the ceiling of my bedroom. I watched the blades go around and around, the mattress of my bed moulded to the shape of my back as I remained completely still. I wasn’t sure why my fan was on. It was below freezing outside, the world was engulfed in a white blanket of snow, and the flurries fell from the sky seemingly randomly onto the ground outside. They lacked direction. I pondered that for a moment. My mind was a canvas of sloppily painted thoughts, each brushstroke creating new colours and new details to focus on. The colour was white now, the thought was snow. I inhaled deeply, and sank further into the mattress.
The fan became almost alien-like as my worn-out eyes warped the blades, shifting their direction from clockwise to counter clockwise, slowing them down and speeding them up. I wasn’t sure which direction they were spinning anymore, and it didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t even sure which direction my own life was spinning. I exhaled slowly and closed my eyes. I could see shades of red. If I focused hard enough, I could see the blood vessels that strung themselves beneath my eyelids. They had direction—a purpose. They weren’t like the flurries that fell outside my window. Even the silver fan blades that spun around and around had purpose. Where was mine? My canvas was red, silver and white now. All these colours painting themselves into my array frivolous thoughts.
I opened my eyes. My bedroom was still the same as it was moments ago. I found it odd. The world didn’t change much while my eyes were closed, but the blades of the fan had moved—had continued moving while I was away (in a manner of speaking). It was interesting to me. My world remained still behind my eyelids, but the world around me didn’t falter. The blades of the fan hadn’t skipped a beat. I sloppily rolled over and grabbed my phone off the nightstand next to my bed.
I had shut it off three days ago and I was sure that all my friends on various social media accounts continued posting about their lives in my absence, but I had an aching feeling inside. I wanted to turn it on, just to see if anyone was still interested in me, but staring at the deactivated screen sobered up my mind. I abandoned my phone in the sheets next to me and rolled back over. I was more interested in watching the snow than I was in a notional world within the tiny screen of my phone.
The snow began to slow in speed, each snowflake becoming more rare as I watched the sun set behind the houses in front of my bedroom window. I could hear my family, their voices faint and muffled behind the wooden door of my bedroom. They were talking casually about something that I couldn’t make out. I wasn’t interested in what they were saying, however, and rolled onto my back once again to stare at the ceiling fan. I found a blade and attempted to follow it with my eyes. It spun too fast for me to keep up, and I eventually gave up on it. Even though I abandoned the blade, it continued to rotate. It didn’t even notice I had left it behind.
“This is so stupid.” The sound of my own voice breaking past the silence of my bedroom was shocking to me. I didn’t think I’d said anything in the past three days since I shut off my phone. I kind of shut off my own life. Everything in these past three days were shades of white, silver, and red.
The flurries stopped falling completely, and the sky had turned from a reddish orange to a blueish purple colour. The colours reflected off the snow and poured into my bedroom, making it appear more dreamlike. I sat up and breathed in deeply, as though the colour that filled my room had a scent. I wanted to take it all in—to live in this moment forever, alone and away from all people with only the colours of the sunset flooding in and washing me away. In this moment, I felt as though I might be able to exit my bedroom and face everything I had done in the past week with confidence that I could fix everything.
But I knew that I couldn’t fix anything.
The blue that came in seemed overwhelming now as I remembered all the damage I had caused this week. I tore down my relationships, as well as my friendships, and isolated myself to my bedroom. I was a coward. I thought if I stayed hidden away, nothing could come back to haunt me. If I shut off my phone, nobody could try to contact me with questions. If I left my fan on, I didn’t have to think about what I had done, or what I had been through.
The chambray blue that filled my room cast shadows and swirled about, grabbing my body, holding me down, and spinning me around the room. Or, perhaps, it was the room that began to spin around me. The more I recalled past events, the faster it became, and the objects in my room became less distinguishable, blurring themselves out as the speed of my mind increased. I couldn’t stop my mind from digging things up and amplifying them. What if I turned my phone back on and nobody had messaged me? Or what if I turned it back on and someone DID message me? What would I say? How could I turn back time and stop myself in the past from doing what I did?
Would it even matter if I had stopped myself? I probably would have done everything the same even if I were given a second chance.
There was a knock on my bedroom door. Everything that spun itself around in my mind had stopped abruptly and fell to the floor, shattering into pieces. The colours from my canvas mixed themselves together and transformed to a stormy shade of grey. I stood in the centre of my room trying to collect myself, but there was another knock.
I gathered up the broken pieces of myself and opened the door.
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