MY SACRED SPACE

By Jodie Cain Smith

I’m aggravated. Something isn’t right. In fact, this is all wrong.

I should be typing away at my desk, surrounded by all the objects that motivate me: Notebooks stacked four high full of ideas for future writing days, words of inspiration pinned to bulletin boards, the most brilliant phrases ever thought or spoken scribbled on scratch paper resting beneath paperweights.

But I am not at my desk in my writing space; the space I didn’t realize was sacred until today. I am on my couch, squeezed out of my office by a visit from my in-laws. The young woman traveling with my mother-in-law needed space to sleep. In my 1,500 square foot apartment with only one guest room, the only available space was my office. I thought I would be fine with her suitcase, air mattress, pillow, and blankets filling the open spaces of my writing space. I was wrong.

My space has been invaded, blighted, bruised. I want to burst through the door and promise my space that soon she will be healed. I will purge the stranger from her carpeted floor and plush armchair with matching ottoman, remove the shrapnel of shoes, tank tops, cell phone chargers, empty water bottles, and dirty socks. I will gently wipe the makeup particles from her wooden desk. But instead, I sit on my couch, do nothing to protect my writing space, and wait for the invasion to end.

My personal violation is not the young woman’s fault. The stranger in my house doesn’t know what it’s like to create, to write. She doesn’t understand the intimate relationship I have with my writing space. In her mind, the room is just an office, a place where work is done and mail is sorted and bills are paid. She doesn’t know that hidden in that space are my darkest secrets, my vulnerabilities, and my wildest fantasies. She doesn’t know that of everywhere on Earth, I am my truest self in my writing space. Risks are taken, worlds are explored, and lives are created in my writing space. And in that space, I decide if anything I create will be allowed to escape beyond the walls of my office and take the greatest risk of all – be read by someone other than me.

As any good daughter-in-law does, I opened my home and my life to people other than myself. The in-laws and anyone they bring with them is part of the “I do” package. I just never considered that they would land in my sacred space. And until now, I didn’t realize that it would bother me this deeply.

Yes, my room will return to its former glory soon. All evidence of the occupier will be removed. The room will be cleaned, and I will retreat to my space to create another world from the inner workings of my mind. If only I could create a world where screaming, “Get out! Get out! Get out!” wouldn’t result in a rift between my mother-in-law and myself that no amount of carefully thought out words could fix. If only…