The  Room of Important Things 

The spare room still wears its cornflower blue wallpaper scattered with pink hollyhocks. It has probably been there for forty years. The ceiling paint is cracked and peeling, and every so often I find flakes of it on the floor. Two closets without doors line one wall. An outdated, shallow fireplace sits beneath a  mantel covered with unread books. The room is full of years of unfulfilled dreams—journals, art supplies, preschool teaching materials, forgotten projects, photographs piled in boxes and ambitions that never quite became realities.

One closet holds twenty years of parenting: school artwork my children proudly carried home, baby blankets, old suitcases, a graduation robe and a prom dress. Against another wall sits a desk my husband built from an old wooden door. It is stained with paint and buried beneath pens, notebooks, and all the little things a writer insists she needs. Bookshelves crowd every available space divided by topics I once was interested in, women, jews, church history, education. Lamps, rugs, mismatched furniture, and a printer balanced on a file cabinet fill the rest. None of it has another home, and I have never quite committed to letting any of it go.

At the bottom of that file cabinet sits a metal firebox containing the documents that tell the world who I am: birth certificates, marriage licenses, expired passports, our living will, insurance papers, and all the other pieces of paper that prove my existence.

When I was sixteen, I decided to change the spelling of my name. In my twenties, I became paranoid about identity theft. One decision led to another until three different versions of my name existed on various legal documents—different spellings, different licenses, different passports.

I lived that way for years.

Then the REAL ID deadline arrived.

A few weeks before I planned to apply, I stopped at the bank. The teller, Sherry, looked from my driver’s license to my bank account and frowned.

“That won’t fly when you apply for a REAL ID.”

I spent hours requesting documents, standing in government offices, filling out forms, and correcting records. Every variation of my name had to be reconciled until every document matched. Eventually I returned to the spelling on my birth certificate because it was the only one that couldn’t be changed.

It was exhausting.

Exactly the sort of work I spend my life avoiding.

A year later, after finally convincing myself everything was secure, my purse was stolen and my identity was hijacked anyway.

Sometimes life has a wicked sense of humor.

That room containing all the versions of myself in fragments of stuff sits there untouched week after week. Silent, waiting. looming over me like a giant to do list that I can never complete. How do I organize it, I asked ChatGBT. ” you don’t have an organization problem you have a decision problem.” it flaunted.

Writing is one version of me. I have a million pens to prove it.

Teaching is another.

Painting is another still.

Each identity has its own shelf, its own boxes, its own evidence.

There are manuscripts I never finished, journals filled with ideas, and shelves of books collected for research. I have always wanted to publish a book. I always imagined I would. Everyone says that good writers are good readers, so I kept reading, collecting, studying. The books multiplied faster than the proposals.

I didn’t quit writing.

I simply accrued.

Then there are the teaching supplies. Boxes of children’s literature, puzzles, manipulatives, lesson plans, and preschool materials from years I spent in classrooms. I loved teaching. I also struggled to stay in one place. Every time I look at those boxes I wonder whether I should return or finally admit that season has passed and are these trophies of my devotion to teaching or reminders I couldn’t stay the course, face the conflicts, resolve the problems?

Stacks of paintings lean against walls because I have made more art than I have room to display. I love painting, but I never learned how to market it or sell it. I have talent, but talent alone doesn’t build a business. Instead, I created work and stored it away.

I don’t seem to abandon these versions of myself.

I archive them.

The room has become a museum of possible selves.

Nothing in that room feels unimportant. Every object represents a decision I never fully made. Every box says, “What if you come back?”

So I shut the door.

I tell myself I need better shelves, more storage bins, improved organization. I spend hours looking for clever systems that will somehow solve the problem.

I hated how accurate ChatGBT was.

The room isn’t overwhelming because it contains too much stuff.

It’s overwhelming because it contains too many futures.

Every unfinished manuscript says, “Become the writer.”

Every box of teaching supplies says, “Return to the classroom.”

Every stack of paintings says, “Take your art seriously.”

Every possibility asks me to choose.

But choosing one identity feels like grieving the others or at least taking a huge risk.

When my husband and I bought this old house twenty-four years ago, the room looked different. The wallpaper was still dated, but the room was empty. We were young. We had a newborn sleeping in a crib beside our bed because it was the only finished bedroom in the house. The room held possibility instead of history.

It was the first room we made livable.

Ironically, it will probably be the last room we renovate.

Dreams seem to work that way too.

They are among the first things we define for ourselves, , but often the last to be realized. Over time they become covered by responsibilities, disappointments, interruptions, and sometimes years spent simply surviving. perhaps we put them in boxes for when we have more time, what we don’t realize or at least I havn’t, time is not what I lack, its decisiveness.

and Maybe dreams, like old houses, need restoration.

Maybe they need us to return years later and decide what is still worth saving.

Lately I’ve realized I don’t want better storage.

I want clarity.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life organizing possibilities. I want to use the important things and release the rest.

The more I carry—physically, emotionally, creatively—the less forward momentum I seem to have. naturally weighed down, I need to ditch the sandbags the way a hot air balloon, to do what it was made to do.

Whenever I stand in the doorway of that spare room.

Every object asks the same question:

Which version of yourself are you keeping? and I simply don’t have the answer right now. So I close the door again. 

Maybe I’ve spent years preserving every life I ever imagined instead of committing to the one I’m actually living.

The REAL ID forced me to return to the only name I couldn’t change.

Maybe this room is pressuring me to do the same and maybe the truest version of myself is the one I cannot alter.