Beyond the bounds of 1,600 sq. ft.
There's this recurring dream I can't seem to shake. The circumstances that lead up to the event differ sometimes, but the twist is always the same: my revelation that my house is threefold larger than I ever knew.
The previously undiscovered rooms (at least, undiscovered to the slumbering version of myself) are mostly empty, but there's evidence I've been here before: half-opened packing boxes, a spare mattress still in its plastic, an extension cord plugged into the wall.
Awestruck, I run my hands along and feel the age and stories beneath the walls. My fingers catch on the curling seams of someone else's hand-selected wallpaper. Cobwebs host a silent and begrudging audience of observers in my newfound kingdom.
I walk, flummoxed, through the dusty rooms and try to sort out my confusion. How did I not know this hallway existed? I must have walked by a million times. Has anyone else been back here before? What a great party we could throw back here, that is, if we were the kind of people that threw parties. How can these new dwellings become the scene of something grand?
In the hours that follow, I take up residence in these new rooms with Wes. We play music loud enough to fill the entirety of our minds and the space, sit side-by-side pointing at structural oddities and imagining their histories, and plan our future within these walls. We talk about the bold colors we'll paint the walls, which vantage point will be the best from our relocated desks, and I let myself tear up imagining which room might be a good nursery, should that day ever come.
And then I wake up. Equal parts reluctant and excited, I tiptoe downstairs and peer around corners, hold my breath for the hidden hallway to reveal itself to me, press my feet a little harder on the creaky floorboards, throw a suspicious glance at the bookshelf that's just too small to be a portal to a new world - just in case.
But every direction is the same 1,600 square feet I know all too well these days. My life resumes its normal course. I wake up daily to commute the thirty steps to my coffee machine, then work an alleged nine-to-five that consumes the lion's share of my waking hours. Then, on occasion, when it all feels like too much to bear, I sit down and journal about the fact that my life and house are still just as small as I feared.