White is the Warmest Color
by Arlene Rosales-Alvarado
University of Oklahoma
Arlene Rosales-Alvarado is an international student from El Salvador at the University of Oklahoma. She is a junior majoring in Creative Media Production and English Writing and plans to graduate in May 2024. When She was 16, she left her house to study abroad through the United World College program. She is currently 21, and her writing explores living alone and the overwhelming feeling of having something to prove. She usually writes fiction but had the opportunity to take an autobiographical writing class during her sophomore year, and she hasn’t stopped writing personal essays since. She is currently working on a memoir.
“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
Growing up, I never fully grasped the meaning of safe space. There wasn’t a place that saw me at my worst or best until I was forced to hide in a square smaller than 5 x 5 meters.
***
The sun was up, but the clouds blocked every ray of sunshine. However, the green coming from the grass and the trees was vibrant. After 36 hours of planes, 7 hours of waiting in airports, and 5 hours riding a jeep through the bumpiest roads, I finally made it to The Mahindra United World College of India. After passing the check-in point with my two 50-pound suitcases, I finally approached my residential house, or Wadas, as they were called.
Wada 3 (out of 5) was characterized for having the closest access to the Tree House and Internet Hill. It was also the biggest Wada – 57 people lived here. I walked into the common room at 8 in the morning; Matteo – who I later learned was a second-year from Italy, was waiting for the newcomers (the first years). Since I still didn’t have access to the internet, he let me use his computer to log in to Facebook and contact my family; after all, I knew they were probably awake, waiting for my journey to conclude.
Karen, a second-year from El Salvador, helped me with my suitcases. We left the common room, and went down the stairs. Downtown was where the boys’ houses were, while uptown was the girls’ houses. My surprise came when we passed the boy’s area and went downstairs again. In front of the stairs, which started narrow and grew wider as we went down them, was house 11 – the Big House; 5 people lived inside instead of 4. As I opened the door, I didn’t know what to expect. How much can you expect from a mountain in the middle of rural India? I let the tall blue door open all the way, and I walked in. The first thing I noticed was a rusty metal bookshelf on the left side; there were three letters, each with a name and a package of cookies. I read the two strange-looking names until I found the one with my name on it. It was a welcome letter Annemijn, my second-year roommate, had written for us (I’ll be honest, I didn’t know how to spell her name for the longest time).
No one else was in the room, and I don’t know if that made it easier or harder to process everything that was occurring — I was alone on the other side of the world. On the opposite side of the door, there were two beds put together to create a mega-bed, which was a regular queen’s bed – the beds could barely fit someone over 5’6’’, so I guess being short did have some advantages after all. Behind the mega-bed was a wide window with a dirty screen. Green was all you could see, and the ray of sun that came through it made the room feel even cozier. I looked at both corners. The decorations on the walls worked together to create an atmosphere that made me feel at peace — quotes, images of landscapes, fairy lights, and family pictures. I got closer to the window and saw the tree house for the first time. It looked like it could fall at any moment. The wood looked old, and the stairs made a noise that I later learned how to avoid. It didn’t look safe, but judging a book by its cover is never good.
Since I was the first to arrive, I got to choose my bed first. After much thought and considering I didn’t want to be the first thing people got to see when they entered our room, I picked up the bottom right corner of the house – which also had a window so I could get sunlight. I had brought a couple of pictures with me – my family, friends, and other important moments, like when my basketball team won the state championship. However, those photos stayed on my desk for a while. I didn’t think I would miss those memories – recollections of a life I was not returning to.
Later that day, I met my roommates – Kushi from Oman, Naina from India, Lucrezia from Italy, and Annemijn from The Netherlands. I instantly bonded with Lucrezia and Annemijn because they both spoke Spanish. We had our little inner circle inside the house for a while, making me feel seen, a feeling I didn’t know I needed. The first two weeks were everything you imagine when a character moves to a new place in a movie: everyone tries to make everyone feel welcome, you let many things slide out of fear of offending someone, and you keep everything clean, or at least most of it. However, things went south pretty quickly.
If you have never shared a room with someone, you might not understand how little privacy one has. As the days passed and school picked up speed, I concluded that having five girls in a single room wasn’t probably the best idea, mostly when we were on our periods. Patience flew out of the window as soon as Kushi’s alarm was too loud in the mornings, Lucrezia’s cigarette addiction was too much to handle, Naina’s impatient attitude was intolerable, and Annemijn’s and my friends didn’t connect much with the rest of the house. What started as an open house quickly became five different corners with a massive waste of space in the middle that no one dared to reclaim. I don’t remember who did it first, but a few days later, we all had curtains surrounding our areas, and that unity was gone.
Honestly, my corner was depressing. I won’t sugarcoat it. Naina kept moving her furniture and making my space smaller to the point where it became claustrophobic. The squeaky metal chair and uneven desk sat next to my head. Every morning I had to be careful not to bump my head when waking up. I could barely open the closet door to change, which made getting ready a pain. The metal shelf was so corroded and old that it would make a high-pitch sound with minimum contact. I didn’t want to be inside my room at all. It was just an empty space. I guess a room does tell a lot about who we are. My room was never the hang-out spot. No one wanted to come to my room. There was nothing special nor comforting, just four white walls and a shelf that could fall on my head any moment. The room was not appealing to anyone. Would it be too self-pitying to say my corner represented how I felt about not being anyone’s first option?
Did I ever decorate my room? Yes, I tried to change it so people would want to hang out there, the same way I started to change who I was to make people like me. Deep down, I wanted to believe that all my problems could be solved if only that tiny corner were different when the reality was that I just simply didn’t know what it meant to be who I wanted to be.
***
Looking back at my small square of a room, it makes sense to miss who I was at that moment, or at least the way things used to be. Not everything was perfect, but there were moments when those two eggshell white walls, the bookshelf that was falling apart, and the washed-out mandala tapestry were the warmest, even when everything around felt lifeless. It was in that house where I said ‘I love you’ for the first time, where I finally confessed to someone how much weight I was carrying on my shoulders, where I pulled up so many all-nighters, where I learned how beautiful the moon is, where I learned to tolerate the smell of tobacco, where I found out about my best friend’s accident. That room saw a lot and made me realize many things I had never imagined. Still, I don’t know if I was happy inside or if everything that truly happened made me create a bond with that room.
Now that I think about it, I’ve lived in 6 different houses (or rooms) in the last five years, and none of them has ever represented me. What does that say about me? Am I the problem? Why can I not care about the quality of a room? Would it make a difference if my walls had pictures instead of just being white? Would the shadow from fairy lights make me feel warmer than the white light from the ceiling? My issue is that when I need to be alone, I don’t care about what surrounds me. It took me a while, but I finally grew tired of trying to show who I was through my room when it was never enough for people.
My room might not have been memorable, but I chose to keep it that way. In the end, not decorating or caring about the state of my room was my way of making it feel like I had control over something. That small corner inside the biggest and oldest house of Wada 3 was my way of realizing that it was okay just to be who I wanted to be. That place, which might have felt claustrophobic for many, was big enough for me. Nothing could bother me while I was inside, and while it wasn’t a pretty place, and many won’t even remember it, I do. Because it was more than just a dusty corner, but a starting point for recognizing I could take control of my life and just do whatever I wanted to do with it. Just like I could decide if I wanted to keep my room door open or closed for people to see, I could also take control of my life’s door — open it when I wanted people to see who I was or close it when I didn’t want anyone to see all the chaos surrounding my life.
Interview with the Author
1. What do you want readers to take away from your writing?
I want readers to connect with my experiences and realize that sometimes it is okay not to know all the answers. You don’t have to know who you are yet, there is a lot of time to make mistakes, but as long as you acknowledge them and use them to change, everything will be alright. I just want readers to find a safe space within my writing and to realize that even when you might not see it, your life and stories are worth telling.
2. Is there an emotion that you feel when you write your pieces?
When I write, I become vulnerable. But the main emotion I feel is relief. I try to write every day, but sometimes I don’t know what I feel, so when I can finally write it down, a burden is taken off my shoulders, and I can get to know myself better.
3. What is your creative process when you write? Is there a mood you set? A mindset you focus on?
Everything starts as a ranting session. I just start dumping everything on my computer, I don’t care how silly or melancholic it sounds; my purpose is to free myself. Music is always a must. Depending on the mood, I listen to Spanish ballads or worship music, they help me concentrate and to feel at peace. The most important aspect of my creative process is to be as transparent and raw as possible with my emotions; if I don’t feel them, it is not worth telling…yet.
4. What is your creative process when you write? Is there a mood you set? A mindset you focus on?
I wish people could realize the power we each hold inside us and how much our words can impact someone. Whether you share your writing or not, being able to lay out your emotions is better than bottling them up. It doesn’t matter if you write every day or once a month because those words belong to you in the end, and no one can tell you how you feel is wrong.