Zen Room

Walking into the attic always gave me eerie vibes. You know when you walk into a store or a place and you get overwhelmed with joy and you just light up, well that is how my attic feels but the complete opposite.

My mom has been complaining about her job and her stress levels going up recently so I thought I would convert the attic into a zen room. I can hang plates and paint it a light color, maybe I can put an oil diffuser in there. She can use it as a yoga room too. There are a couple steps I have to take before I start bringing stuff in to make it look pretty. I started sweeping out the spiderwebs and dust. Then I started moving the boxes with random junk to one corner so I could figure out a way to organize and get rid of some stuff.

I started moving some boxes around and I came across one that said “ DO NOT OPEN” so just like anyone I knew what I had to do. I had to open it! This was the hardest box to ever open. You know those boxes that are from amazon and it’s all specially wrapped with all the different kinds of tape… well this was so much harder to open than that. When I finally opened it it had really random things. It had a brown poster rolled up, a weird elephant knickknack, a crystal, and a gold necklace with a pendant of an old lady's face. I opened up the brown poster and you will never believe what was on it.

It said “missing person, please call 123-456-7890 if found” with a picture of me when I was about 5 or 6 years old on it! I couldn’t believe this. Was my whole life a lie? Is my mom actually my real mom? What about my dad? I knew I had a lot of sneaking around my house to do because I needed to know more. I took a picture of the poster and put everything back to where it was just in case someone found out that I found the poster.

I wanted to do research and contact family members but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt so unsettled in my house and near my parents or so called parents. I told them I was spending the night at my friend’s house. I called my closest friend right away and explained everything to her. She didn’t believe me so I sent her the picture of the poster. I got in my car and drove to her house so I could sleepover.

When I got to her house I showed her the picture again. This is so hard to crack because the poster is so vague. It doesn’t give any information about the missing person or any other information you needed. I decided to call my grandma to see if she knew anything about it. That backfired because she has dementia and isn’t going to remember anything anyway. I called my aunt next because I knew my mom and her were close. She thought I was crazy and had no idea what I was talking about. Maybe my mom just told her to not tell anyone because this is a big deal.

I finally built up the nerve to call my mom. I told her everything and all the information I had. She started laughing so hard she could barely breathe. I was so confused and then she said “No way, you finally found the box. Dad and I planted that years ago as a prank and you never found it so we forgot about it!!”