Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead

“I have started to collect dirty dishes in my bedroom. My smoothie cup from earlier today is sitting on top of a small stack of cups, plates, and bowls. Piling the dishes feels sort of like building a block castle. Every dish I add is risky. At some point the castle is going to collapse.”

Gilda’s tower of dirty dishes is a recurring symbol throughout Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead that acts as a gauge for her mental health. When she has a good day, she is able to take care of her dishes; when she has bad days, the dishes accumulate until the thought of dealing with them becomes unbearable. As a whole, Gilda’s private environment reflects her mental health.

“I feel like my ribs are a birdcage and my heart is a bird on fire.”

Gilda uses her signature animal-based similes to signify that her heart is trapped in her chest but desperately wants to escape. The escape of her heart would mean death. Thus, the image of her body as a cage for her heart illustrates her complex fear of death.

“Sometimes I wonder if I have really been the same person my whole life. I stare at the picture, and think: Is that really me? I have this bizarre feeling like I was a different person at every other stage of my life. I feel so removed from myself then. Sometimes I feel like I was a different person a month ago. A day. Five minutes. Now.”

Gilda often exhibits disorientation, both from herself and her surroundings. Gilda’s dissociation from her past selves makes it difficult for her to form a meaningful narrative of her life and how she arrived at where she is now. This disorientation is reflected in her stream-of-consciousness narration, in which memories appear in disjointed ways that interrupt the flow of the narrative.