The Rooms That Held Me

The versions of me they held

I’ve always believed rooms can hold memory. In the weight of silence, the shape of the air, the echoes that never quite leave. Some of the rooms I’ve lived in were decorated with love. Some were soaked in fear. Some were mine. Most weren’t.

But each of them held a version of me.

The Room with the Bright Wallpaper

We moved in when I was ten. Just starting high school. The kind of age where you’re old enough to remember everything, but not old enough to understand what any of it means.

My stepdad decorated the room. Chose the wallpaper himself. Big, bright flowers in pinks and greens, with fat yellow petals and curling blue vines. Loud. Garish, even. He built a shelf under my window for my keyboard, my bed tucked just underneath, so I could sit and play songs with my knees curled beneath me and watch the world outside.

There was an old Asian man who used to sit out in his yard every evening with a shisha pipe. Same time every day, like clockwork. I’d watch him through the window while playing Elvis’s ‘Wooden Heart’ for the hundredth time, my fingers learning the notes by muscle memory while he disappeared into puffs of smoke.

It wasn’t all bad, you see. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. It wasn’t all bad. He built that shelf with care. Put up the wallpaper. Sat on my bed once while I showed him how to play a song, and he nodded with something that looked like pride.

But that same wallpaper is what I stared at when he lost his temper. When I shrank back against the wall and pretended I wasn’t there. The same shelf that held my keyboard saw my arms braced behind it, trying to disappear into the plaster.

The room changed with me. When I was twelve, it was where I hid twenty cigs under my mattress until my mum found them while changing the sheets. I got smarter after that and hid them under a pile of books at the back of the wardrobe. That wardrobe became my secret place. I had this tall-boy cupboard… just a couple of drawers with a cupboard above, and I used to open it late at night, write things I couldn’t say out loud on the glossy white inside with a whiteboard pen. I’d sit and stare at the words with a mixture of fear and pride. Then spit on my sleeve and scrub it clean before anyone saw them.

It was a room that saw me fall in love for the first time. Proper teenage love. A boy two years older, all trouble and fun. I’d sit on my bed and write stories about him. Me, him, and the mates we shouldn’t have been hanging out with, doing things we shouldn’t have been doing.

It was the room I first slept with the man who would become my husband. Fifteen years old. He was older. Too old, really. But it felt like fate then, like a love story. By twenty, we were married.

It was also the room where my stepdad finally left. My mum kicked him out for getting a 17 year old girl pregnant. I still remember sitting on my bed, hearing the front door slam and not quite knowing what to feel. Relief? Victory? Grief?

That room had seen too many versions of me. Quiet. Scared. Rebellious. In love. Writing stories. Hiding secrets. Crying over boys. Pretending I was fine. I don’t know what became of that room. Whether someone painted over the wallpaper or stripped it off entirely. But I hope they did. It was too loud to hold any more ghosts.

The Room Where I Felt Free

It was a shelter, technically. Gibson Terrace. A kind of halfway stop before you got a real place. They gave us a small apartment. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, a toilet, but the bathroom was communal. I hated that part. The smell. The strangers. The noise. It was full of druggies and wrong-un’s. But I didn’t care, not really. Because I was with my dad. And for the first time in a long time, I felt untethered and free.

The room itself was basic. Clinical, almost. The kind of space that didn’t pretend to be anything else. A bed. A window. Walls that echoed when you raised your voice. But it matched how I felt inside back then; bare, unpredictable, full of restless noise and nothing steady to hold onto.

I was fourteen. Full of trouble. Lived mostly outside the four walls anyway. Nights were spent running around with friends drinking, taking pills, climbing through broken windows into shops and old warehouses like we were invincible. The world felt like one long dare. And I said yes to all of it.

Days were lazier. We’d stretch out by the canal in Ashton, sipping cider, telling stories, making plans for later. I barely slept. Ate even less. I was skinnier than I should’ve been. Probably sadder, too.

What I did know was that no one was hovering over me. No one was telling me what to do. No one was shouting. I had a room, a key, and a version of freedom I hadn’t known before. I felt alive and untouchable.

And that mattered more than comfort or safety. Back then, it was enough just to feel like the world didn’t own me.

The Room That Wasn’t Mine

By the time we moved into that house, everything felt muted. The room we shared was beige, forgettable. A bed. A couple of drawers. Plain curtains that didn’t quite meet in the middle. No photographs. No colour. No softness. Just a space where we slept, fought in silence, and avoided the truth that was slowly swallowing us whole.

It didn’t feel like me. But I didn’t know what me felt like anymore. I had spent so many years shapeshifting, being who someone else needed, keeping the peace, making things work, that I’d lost the thread of my own name. That room just mirrored it back to me. Empty. Stagnant. Functional. A place to fold clothes and pretend I wasn’t disappearing.

I was seven months pregnant with our fourth child when I found out. That he’d been sleeping with a 17 year old girl. That it had been going on for months. I sat in that room and cried until my whole body shook.

I had built a life with someone who had already left, long before I knew to follow. I had spent years trying to hold something together that didn’t want to be whole. And I had done it all while carrying, feeding, soothing, growing. While disappearing piece by piece.

That room saw all of it. The shaking sobs, the pacing at night, the swallowing of screams for the sake of the children. I remember sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. My back aching. My chest hollow. My future suddenly unrecognisable.

I didn’t decorate that room. I never tried to make it mine. And maybe that’s the part that hurts the most. I think I already knew, deep down, that I wouldn’t be there long. That the woman I needed to become couldn’t live in that room. She had to walk out and never look back.

The Room That Knew His Name

It was the bedroom in Stockport. The one where the light hit the window just right in the early evenings, painting golden lines across the carpet like it was trying to warm something buried. It was the room where I met him. The Ghost. And the room where I lost him, too. Though not in any one moment. He disappeared in fragments. Slowly. Quietly. Like dusk giving in to dark.

That room held the first night we shared. Tangled limbs. Breath against my neck. Fingers brushing skin like it mattered. Like I mattered. He was all sharp edges and soft eyes, and I fell so fast I forgot to look down.

It was the room where I laughed with him, where I touched his face like a secret. Where his hand would rest on my hip like it belonged there. Where he kissed me so gently, like he was afraid I’d break. And maybe I already had.

But it’s also the room where I learned what absence feels like. The kind that slips through cracks. A missed call. A longer silence. A shift in tone. I’d lie on that bed staring at the ceiling, wondering if he ever thought of me. If he meant it when he said don’t read into this, even though his touch said the opposite.

Some days I couldn’t breathe for missing him. Others, I convinced myself I never really loved him at all. I was wrong.

But that room didn’t just break me. It also held me together. Because it was in that same room that I learned what friendship really is. The kind that pours you a drink and makes you laugh when your heart is in pieces. The kind that climbs into bed with you and holds you when the sobs won’t stop. The kind that sees all your mess and doesn’t flinch.

I learned that family isn’t always blood. Sometimes it’s the people who sit on your floor at 2am, making you laugh and telling you you’re going to be okay, even when you’re not ready to hear it. The ones who remind you who you are when you’ve forgotten.

That room held both: the kind of love that haunts you, and the kind that heals you. Maybe both still live there.

The Smallest Room That Held the Most

My dad’s flat wasn’t big. Two bedrooms, though one was barely big enough to be called that. More like a wide cupboard. But he always made sure that second room was mine. No matter what. No matter how long I needed it. No matter what I was running from.

It had two single beds, pushed against opposite walls with a narrow split between them. I’d dump my bags on one. My entire life packed into a few outfits, two pairs of trainers, a laptop and my journals. That’s all I had most of the time. That, and Sasha, my little Staffie, who curled up between my feet like a hot water bottle with a heartbeat.

The room wasn’t anything special. The walls were plain. The beds squeaked if you shifted too much. But it was the only place in the world I felt safe. Where I could just be.

My dad would just tell me to be careful, and I knew he meant it in the only way that mattered. I think he knew I’d been carrying too much for too long. That sometimes the best thing a parent can do is give you a key, a bed, and the space to fall apart quietly.

I did fall apart there. More than once. But I also put myself back together. Slowly. Gently. I’d write until my hand cramped, curled into the sheets with Sasha’s breath at my feet, and remember what it felt like to exhale. That little room, with its wonky mattress and the constant hum of the customers in the shop below, became my refuge. Because no one ever made me feel like I had to leave.

Sometimes it’s the smallest rooms that hold the most love.

The Room Where I Chose Myself

A place where two different versions of my life collided: the one I was still escaping, and the one I hadn’t yet dared to believe in.

The room had flashes of me in it. A throw I’d picked out because I loved the colour. My books, stacked in uneven piles. A scented candle that I never lit, just liked the idea of. The kind of details that whisper, someone lives here. Someone who is trying.

But behind the door, the worst of it happened. The shouting. The threats. The way he made me feel like I was nothing - less than nothing. That room knew what it was to be afraid. To flinch. To stay silent just to keep the peace. To lie awake counting heartbeats and wondering if they’d be your last.

But that same room is also where something shifted. Where I sat on the edge of the bed one night, heart hammering, and decided no more. I remember the exact moment. The way it rolled through me like a wave. I didn’t deserve this. My children didn’t deserve this. I couldn’t keep calling this survival when it was slowly killing me.

And slowly, quietly, it became a different kind of space. The fear didn’t vanish overnight, but something else started growing in the cracks. Peace. Maybe even hope. Because that room… that same room, is also where I let Marcus in.

I wasn’t looking for it. But there he was. Steady, kind, completely unlike everything I’d known. He just sat beside me, listened, stayed. I let him hold me in that bed where so much pain had lived. Let him see me, all of me, even the parts I thought were unlovable.

It was a room of fierce contradiction. Where I was torn down, but also where I rose. Where I stopped surviving and started choosing. Where I learned that real love doesn’t shout, doesn’t shove, doesn’t shame. It just stays.

The Room I Built Myself

This is the room I chose. Every inch of it. From the luscious green walls to the oversized white boucle bed, this room shines with me. The full, loud, rooted me. The woman who knows what she wants, and who finally, finally, let herself have it.

It started as my space. My sanctuary. I picked the bed… king-sized and soft enough to drown in. The rustic linen bedsheets. The candles and incense I actually light now, not just display. I took my time. Layered things slowly and deliberately.

And then, Marcus moved in. Officially, it was a year after I did. Realistically, he was here most nights anyway. Quietly, gently, he just became part of the room. Part of the home. Part of me.

There’s a gold pineapple on the shelf. He brought me a fresh pineapple once instead of flowers, near the start. It became a bit of a joke, and now it’s more than that; a symbol of what we built. I have tattoos of it. On my arm, bold and big. On my ring finger, tiny and quiet. Like our love. Loud where it counts. Soft where it matters.

This room doesn’t just look like me. It feels like me. Warm. Safe. A little bit chaotic in the best way. There are books by the bed. Pineapple-shaped things in all the wrong places. The dog takes up too much space. The baby wakes us too early. But it’s ours. Fully, unapologetically ours.

After all the rooms I didn’t choose, this one feels like a promise kept. To myself. To the girl who curled up in too-small beds with a too-heavy heart. To the woman who thought love only came with pain.

This room is proof that it doesn’t have to.