Attic Mattress

For a short period of time, I lived in a small attic space of my friend's home. I had just graduated college; submitted several applications for jobs, and needed a place to stay while I waited to hear back.

I think about this moment of my life a lot.

My room was positioned off of an upstairs loft where my friend slept. It was more of a closet than a bedroom, but the vaulted ceilings made it impractical for either.

A plain mattress rested on the floor and was essentially the anchor of the room. It was surrounded by a collection of boxes containing my limited possessions. A 13-inch CRT TV rested on top one of the boxes hooked up to a DVD player that could read video files off of DVD-Rs. Nearby, A large stack of DVD-Rs on a spindle filled with my ripped movie collection.

I visualize it in two different ways:

1. On a sunny mid-afternoon day with dust floating across a sunbeam leaking through the curtains of a nearby window.
2. In the darkness of the night, lit entirely by the glow of my tiny CRT TV.

That period of my life feels so far away now, but the memory of it is so vivid - taking up a permanent residence in my mind. The thought of my old friends and how far apart we've grown since then makes me quite sad. Unfortunately, in my recollection of that room I'm always alone. It has become a liminal space, where we've all moved on. And yet, I occasionally get trapped there, waiting on my friends...

Written on November 28, 2023