space

I never really had a sense of "territory". It's an odd thing I'm realising, because as I have discovered, a lot of my friends decorate their bedrooms to reflect their minds, their interests, their passions and such. It might be a sort of territory-marking, or simply a projection of the psyche in real, three-dimensional space.

I, however, have never known the experience of owning my own room. As long as I remember I've slept on that double decker bed, in the same room as either one sister or the other. For a short time I was alone, I slept in the study room. For a period too I slept downstairs with the piano and the french doors--but it wasn't my room, because it was the entrance to the house.

I suppose this in part--from childhood and through teenhood--is what taught me not to care about what I have and do not, and not to fight for control or ownership--and especially not to be territorial. Since I share all I have anyway.

Some people I know who share rooms with their siblings do decorate their "halves" as they please, too--with posters, pictures, cutouts, marks of interest. Both my sisters do, in fact--the chief reason there is a Justin Bieber poster in my bedroom.

I do decorate my desk area and my shelf. But I've been scolded so many times by my sister for "making a mess" on the wall that I don't add to it much anymore. I barely take up any more space on the wall than my sister's Justin Bieber poster does.

Basically, space allocation in my room is painfully unfair. She has an entire system of shelves while I have about three (on which are stored vampire novels, hair accessories, deodorants, weird creams whose purposes I do not intend to discover, etc.) while I don't even have space in which to keep my books. To top things off, her bed is near double the size of mine.

AND when I do store my stuff in conspicuous sight because of this immense lack of space, she complains about the "mess".

This blatant favouritism in space designation does not bother me much though. But of course, I never have known the idea of owning an entire space of my own. One which I can put to full use and decorate without the intervention of others, or complaints about "the mess"--nor known this thing called fairness in material owning. My siblings have always asked for--and received--more than me.

I wonder if this in any way accounts for my lack of a "territorial sense" regarding anything else--my personal pride, my appearance, my class, my school, my nation(s?). It matters so little to me "where I come from" or "how I present myself"; I simply drift to occupy whatever is given to me, and people will know--at least in material senses--that I don't require things and will take whatever I have.

It's a relief at times; it's saddening at others because of how disproportionately much my sisters get in comparison. It is not jealousy but the innate sense of waste--that I could be having these books and things I see online but will never ask for them--that upsets me.


Of course a very large factor in these matters is the differences in our levels of combativeness. I'm not sure how it develops, but both my sisters are the sort to shout and wrangle till they get what they want. Perhaps because of other things that led to the ingraining of these preferences and habits in me, I tend to be avoid asking frivolously--only sparingly--to the point where my parents think they are severely depriving me of affection, and insist on giving me things. The habits feed each other; now I want little and get little, but when I do get, it's normally in a huge splurge, and on something of little value to anyone else in my house--my tablet, art books, branded art materials, etc.


But back on the issue of personal space and the lack of it. One of my sisters, second in the family, has her own room, and has no problems decorating since she owns it. (By the way, you might like to know that the study room I once "borrowed" as a bedroom came under her ownership, and was converted into a full bedroom for her sake when she moved in. Simply because she insisted.)

My other sister, third in the family, and the one who shares her room with me, has no problems either. And why? Because her sister, namely me, allows her to decorate the entire room as she wants without arguing that the space ought to be mine as much as it is hers--merely because the proportion to which I care doesn't warrant taking up a case regarding it.

That is not to say it does not bother me. It bothers me deeply, and maybe it is this lack of space that has forced me to take to artistic representation to capture spaces I do not have. They express themselves through their decoration; I must do it through my creation. It's not something I'm unhappy about. Only, I'm not sure what other effect this has had on myself as a whole.