One Special Place

Imagine yourself walking into a room where the walls are covered in purple. At the crack of the door you see something interesting and you don’t know exactly what it is, but you get an inkling that you are immediately blessed. As you continue to walk in the room you see a wall covered in photos of dogs and a sign that reads, “you had me at woof.” Just that sign makes you more intrigued so you continue to walk in. Then you see a blue couch and above the blue couch you see hand-made art work. Around the hand-made art work you see a stick-on quote that grabs your attention; it’s so real it pops out at you. As you continue towards the middle of the room, you see a white, framed, luscious bed that you feel like you could hop into at any moment even though you’ve never been in this room before, so you do just that. You decide to act on your impulse and hop in the bed. Your covers are wrapped around you in baby blue, white, and purple. You’re wearing the pajamas that your good friend gave you and above there are white butterflies flying in formation. On one side of you there are pictures of you dancing and on the other side there is a picture of one of your role models; Martha Graham. On the wall above your computer, the dancing doesn’t stop. There are calendar photos of expressive dance movement and quotes related to dance. You don’t know how the pajamas got on you or how your favorite decorations got around you, but you feel so special. It doesn’t stop there. On the shelf by your computer, there are pictures of everyone you possibly love in your life and you see the same thing on your bookshelf; you’re like “how did this happen? Is it a dream?” You close your eyes and open them again and realize no, it isn’t a dream; it is your room.

What I’ve just described to you is my bedroom. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I decided to talk about my room. Every time I look around my room, I smile and I know that when I wake up from one of those bad dreams I talked about in a previous post, that I am ok because I just look around at those pictures and at that moment I feel like everyone in those pictures are hugging me at once. It is an amazing feeling. I loved my room at the other purple pad, but I love this one even more because I was able to add almost everyone’s photograph that I love and care about in my room and that is just a great feeling when you walk into a room. When I first moved into this apartment, I was always adding photos for that reason. I thought to myself, “Oh, I didn’t add a photo of so-and-so because I didn’t get a hug from them yet. Oh, I need to include this person because they are important to me.” When I sleep at my parents’ house, it is totally different because I have that mindset now. Even though it is where I grew up it is just a room because it doesn’t have those vibrant colors that I have always wanted in my room. Whenever I tried to convince my mom to convert my room into purple, she always said, “It doesn’t match the rest of the house.” That was one of the things I was very excited about even though I was nervous about living on my own.

That, my readers, is actually where the name of this blog came about. I knew I wanted to share my trials and turbulations of having a disability and living on my own so I could inspire people to do the same and I knew that I wanted purple in the title. For me, purple also represents royalty, beauty, and motivates me to get to a higher standard of living, meaning improve myself as an individual in all the activities I am a part of; whether it be in my personal life, as a dancer, or my newest goal setting opportunity; toastmasters. That is why I also included chandeliers in my room to represent the royalty part of purple. The more I look at my room, the more I am realizing that this room has symbolism for me. At the beginning of this post, I talked about the thing in the doorway that made me feel blessed. What I meant by this is my mezuzah. All Jewish people know that if you have one of these, the room is automatically blessed. Even though they all look different on the outside, they are all the same on the inside which is also another symbolism for me within itself. You see, as human beings, we are all different on the outside,  but are all the same on the inside. For many years now, I have wanted to tell you the meaning behind the purple pad, but it wasn’t until I started decorating this room that it all came full circle for me.

Another way I experienced love this month was when my Uncle Eddie and Aunt Sherri came in from St. Louis. It was so much fun to see them. As many of you know, they are avid readers of this blog and it is people like them who encourage me to stick with my goals and dreams even if they don’t come out and say it because of their personality. For example, they were only with me for a few hours, but they were set on trying to figure out a way for me to get an accessible sink. Once my mom or one of them has a goal in their head, they do not give up and I have them to thank for my positive mindset. When I’m not having a positive day, I just think to myself, “Ok, how can I get this done? How should I think outside the box like Uncle Ed, Aunt Sherri, and my mom would?” And most likely, when I think like that, I can get a lot of things done in a productive manner. The sink isn’t installed quite yet, but we have all of the materials to do so and it will be installed very soon. 

With lots of love and a trace of purple,

Jessi

P.S.- Thank you Uncle Eddie and Aunt Sheri for adding the last touch to the new Purple Pad, my purple mezuzah!