Room 32

Room 32     By Diane E. Banasiak

Introduction

We all have a story to tell, one that needs to be told. 

Sometimes we tell that story for others, but most of the time we tell our story in order to make sense of things, to put things in perspective, to understand the “why” behind our actions. 

I am telling this story in an attempt to embrace all of me, the parts I like and the parts I don’t like. It has been a long journey, but it feels so good to get my story out in the open and to celebrate my life even if it has been filled with errors and missteps.  I have taken many wrong turns and made some poor choices, but my biggest error was this:  I looked for love outside myself.  I thought someone else could save me, but I did not need a savior.  I simply needed to love and to embrace myself, flaws and all.  When I did this – when I established a deep abiding love for myself and a generous self acceptance of myself – my world changed. Simply put, I discovered my own power.  Today, living from this powerful place is what matters most to me.

My transformation began back in high school in Room 32.  Room 32 was our drama room.  In that room I discovered a place where dreams were indulged, characters created and recreated and life was a dynamic process born from the imagination.  Cultivating believable characters was not an accident.  Characters came alive in Room 32 because an actor or actress was able to breathe life into the pages of a script and thus transform a platform or a stage into a whole new world.

Hope, my drama teacher and coach, inspired all of us to engage in a process – it was the process of becoming, the process of creating.  That process would culminate with a drama performance meant to inspire and entertain, but Hope made it very clear to us that the life of the characters we created did not end with the performance.  We were instructed to capture only a period of time on stage, knowing, seeing and believing that the story, the life of our character, went on even after our final exit from the stage.

In many ways, I want to recreate a period of time, a period of my life for you.  However, the story you see here began before the words were written down and the story continues long after you get to the final pages of this book.  This “slice of time” is meant to inform and to underscore a transformation that took place within me and around me.

But transformations are intangible and ineffable, and they are hard to capture on paper. That is why “story” seems to be the best way for me to speak about my transformation – to speak about the new awareness that has captured my mind and lifted up my heart.

In Room 32 I got a glimpse of this vision: we have the power within our selves to find our way and to make our way in this world; the power is within us.  We are the creators of our lives, and our lives move and unfold in the direction of scripts we hold – of the scripts we choose to embrace.

Proclaiming myself as creator has been my greatest victory, my brightest achievement for I am at the center of my life – the very creator of my life, and my life moves and unfolds in the direction of the “scripts” I choose to entertain.  However, most of my life I held on to what I call the “church girl script.”  Essentially, I gave my power over to the Roman Catholic Church, and I was at the mercy of powerful forces outside myself.  The powerful, awesome transcendent God of the Catholic Church overtook me, and at times was ready to crush me.  That was the script I held for most of my life - the vision I chose to embrace and to proclaim.

This story is the celebration of a woman’s life who took the journey within and found her own inner sanctuary which I call Room 32.  Finding an inner sanctuary has liberated me and inspired me to embark on a powerful new destiny. 

What will the future bring? Only time will tell.  For now let us take a look at a slice of my life, a life that I have come to love and to embrace and to celebrate as unique and different and me.  The journey is not over, and I am still in the process of writing and creating the next chapters, but I want to share with you what happened and how I came to discover a deep, abiding sanctuary within me.

I hope the same thing can happen to you, dear reader.  I hope that you will find a way to come to terms with your life and your choices - to love yourself and to love yourself fiercely.  That reconciliation with yourself is all that matters and once you find a home within yourself then you can find a home almost anywhere and anyone and everyone can become your family.