The Key

Do you even know how to begin again? It’s been so long. It feels forced and tight. Each sentence feels like digging deep into the recesses of your brain and feeling nothing but dust. How do you even begin again when it’s been so long since you’ve truly sat with yourself? Truly looked inside that part of yourself that was locked away when the world became too real? 

Do you remember the last time you felt inspired? When you got that spark and you had to get it all down as quickly as possible or else it would be snatched away from you? That has to be possible again. You would toil away in your head all day and then go home to an empty apartment. Everyone had somewhere to be except for you.

You would go to your room, hang your backpack up and sit at your desk. Check your MySpace and see that no one was online yet. No new surveys to read. You contemplated doing your own survey so you could ambiguously mention your crush in your responses. You found that song that had been stuck in your head all day. And you played it. And you played it again. And you kept doing that until it wasn't even a song anymore.

And then it was time. It was like a butterfly, fluttering around you and all you had to do was reach out and touch it. One touch and you were ready to go. You opened up the blank page and you got swept away. Swept away into that room that’s now locked where you used to observe, arrange and dissect yourself until you had something to show for it.

The only problem with that room is how the rest of your house would get while you were in there. Once you left your sacred room, you were catapulted back into chaos. That stagnant feeling of hopelessness, the scent of desperation and the ghosts of your absentee parents lurking in the shadows would just wrap you up until you choked on it.

You had no choice but to clean it up. So you decided that maybe you needed to stop going into that room. And maybe you needed to smudge out the ghosts and tend to the smell and the vibe. You never realized how many years that would take. 

You look around one day and see that there are no more ghosts. And the smell is gone and you just need to figure out how to keep the new vibe consistent because that’s the only thing you can’t grapple. The vibe still comes and goes, but at least you have coping mechanisms that can filter that vibe now.

You never really forgot about that room off in the corner. You just kept ignoring it because how could you go in there if you couldn’t make sure that the rest of the house stayed clean while you were in there? But maybe it's time to check it out again. The house smells clean and the ghosts stay away now. Everything feels calm. But the key has gone missing.

Maybe if you could re-create the same atmosphere, you could figure out where you left the key to that locked room.

So you think about it all day at work and then you go home and you race to your desk to devise a key-finding plan. Except now you’re married. So before you sit down, you say hello to your wife. And you talk to her and she has a joint for you. And you smoke it. And then you smoke another. And then you keep doing that until it doesn’t even feel like weed anymore. There’s no use in looking for the key tonight.

So you start again the next day. You spend the workday thinking about it and then you go home. You say hi to your wife and tell her that you’re going to try and find that key tonight so you’ll join her for that joint later. 

You sit at your desk and you put on your headphones. You find that song but it’s just not right. You find another song and it’s good, but it’s still not right. How did you used to find the perfect song every time? 

You dive in anyway and you start to look for the key. Sometimes you have to tear the house apart in order to find what’s missing. It’s not easy to tear apart a home that you spent lots of time tidying up so that you could show the world that you have it together. Tidying up may be a generous term. It’s more like you stuffed everything into drawers and behind the curtains to give the illusion that all is well. So once you start poking around, things just start falling out all over the place. And all of a sudden, everything is a mess again. How can you find one small key in such a big mess?

You can’t go straight home to look for it the next day because you have to go and do that thing where you shake hands and you talk about how busy you are and how great it is to finally meet up and how you should do it again sometime. And you part ways with no real intention of doing it again soon. But for some reason, it helps your career when you go and pretend to be interested in other people. So you always go and you always feel drained afterwards.

So you start again the day after that. You go home, say hi to your wife, say no to the joint, say yes to that song and begin to look for the key again. 

You feel different about it this time. You feel like maybe you are going to find that key tonight.

And all of a sudden, over there in that dusty corner where you keep those old magazines and that Zippo lighter with the scooter on it, you see the key. You can’t believe it. You left it for yourself in the most obvious place. Where you’d never look because it’s too obvious. Maybe the key was never really hidden. Maybe you didn’t want to see the key until it was time to see it. Inside that room, you remember that you can do anything you want to do as long as it’s what you truly want. You realize that everything has led up to this moment. Each misstep, each setback, each detour brought you to this moment where you are finally able to remember where the key had been all along.

You check the time. Perfect. As intended, you've arrived fashionably late.

You enter the room and you smell that overwhelming scent of true freedom. You find that everything is the same as you left it. There are small butterflies fluttering around and they kiss your cheeks and welcome you back with all the love in their wings. It feels like you’re being wrapped up in a big warm, familiar hug from both your past self and your future self. Your past self that wants to welcome you back to such a sacred place and your future self that wants to thank you because they know this is what’s best for you. You never realized how much you missed this room.

You stay there for a long time. You stretch across the small floor and start to feel your own weight pressing down into you. It feels like you’re swallowing yourself whole while watching from the outside. It makes perfect sense and no sense and you’re not sure how that can even be a thing. But it is and you realize it’s best not to question it because at least you’re here and you’re doing it! You’re really doing it.

You leave the room spent and it’s like you’ve finally passed that inevitable wall that meets anyone that’s going somewhere. You leave the room and see that the rest of the house is exactly as you left it. And that’s a relief. You see your wife and she has that joint. You smoke it and kiss her and thank her for helping you keep things clean.

You hope that you never lose the key again. But even if you do, you feel confident that you’ll find it again. Because you never really hid it from yourself anyway. You just put in that spot over there until you were ready to go in there again.

Maybe the true key is to just remember that going there is better than shutting yourself away from it. Knowing your way back is the whole battle.