It would be lovely if the wardrobe was just some kind of
metaphor. Of course, being a literature student, the whole damn world is a
metaphor. I can’t do anything, or say anything, or think anything, without
automatically picking it apart in the most useless of ways. The result being
terrible jokes that only you understand – hence the invention of the
literary-joke-self-high-five.
Anyway, this wardrobe is an actual wardrobe. No, not the one
in the books. The one in my room. That’s not to say I literally go into my
wardrobe, sit there and use my map, camera and phrase book to explore my coats.
But I did try and build Narnia in my wardrobe.
Method: run into garden and pull branches off trees as it
pours with rain and neighbours watch in horror as you have what looks like a
full blown nervous breakdown (it isn’t, quite) run back inside and calmly
arrange the latest additions to your wardrobe while housemates stand awkwardly
in the doorway unsure of how best to broach the subject of your sanity, before you
proceed to cover the floor in paper as you sit in a corner cutting out paper snowflakes
(ice is preferable, but only practical if you’re practical to the point of
combining your wardrobe and freezer). For stylish finishing touch, replace lamppost
with fairy lights (unless you’re wardrobe/freezer is also your dog’s litter
tray).
After I had completed the above itinerary, I sensibly
dressed in fur coat and hat to sit in my wardrobe. See, I said I didn’t use map
and camera. I didn’t say I didn’t sit in my wardrobe.
This behaviour can only be described as a rather unfortunate
by-product of the week that came before. I guess we all have different ways to
cope with post camp blues. Mine was a rather deluded method of escape, that
didn’t take me very far.
So what drove me to do this? Morocco. Apparently they put
something in the mint tea.
Scratch that. They put something in the country. It was my
first time travelling alone, out of necessity rather than choice, and I quickly
realised if travel could be likened to the addictiveness of smoking, then
travel alone is the ecstasy, the crack cocaine, the heroin, of travel.
My week began with a fairly awkward self-introduction to a
couple of English girls, my age. It ended with a near deadly trip on the back
of a stranger’s motorbike. In between, I talked to Moroccans over tea in the souks,
swam through rainbows in a waterfall and learnt the joys of being so terrified
at night that you go and sleep on mud benches next to Frenchmen who’ve been
travelling for two months without changing their clothes, then as morning comes
you sneak off quietly so that you can prepare your face of Intrepid Explorer
Who Fears Nothing and No-one.
See what I mean? Not a healthy addiction. For all I know I
could end up like the Frenchman, only society would find my first flush of
facial hair less socially acceptable. Anyway, that was that. I was hooked.
The thing is - I found something there that I was never going
to find in my wardrobe. (No, not porn – that’s under my bed.) I found this
sense that it didn’t matter what was in my wardrobe (illegally imprisoned fauns,
if only).
For months I’d been more and more neurotically defining
myself by the things in my room – the books, the musical instruments, the
clothes. But there, through the wardrobe so to speak, I remembered or realised
or recreated a self that wasn’t based upon any item. That’s when I discovered
that away from my room and routine, was a sense of accepting myself and being
accepted by others for who I was. The Road (NB: should get one of those in my
room) was peaceful beneath all the discomfort. It was home.
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