The Room With the Keyhole Door

If you were here, you might figure it out. You might see the puzzle piece that I do not, and you’d have left by now; gotten back to your home that you might pet your dog and feed your cat and hug your kids and kiss your partner. You might already be sitting down for a home cooked dinner, thinking about how peaceful it is to sit and hear all the noise and be away from the space without it.

But, you are not me, and I hope you never are. I wish I wasn’t me, and I wish I wasn’t here, but I find that wishes are only as good as the hands behind them. And mine are weak, so, I remain here, waiting for the moment when the realization comes and I go back to the home and the family and the noise. I want the chaos again. I want to unlock myself from this. I do. And yet, I sit here now, writing this to you, oh unfortunate stranger; I write to you this hollow note that find you, like me, feeling like there’s a way out-- And you’ll see that there is, just like I see. If only I could unlock it.

I don’t remember the day when I walked in here. I don’t think I could if I tried. The memory isn’t here, and it would be a waste of time to go looking for it. Whatever it was, it was probably mundane, or innocent, or sad. In the end, it would have been a simple nothing, like walking into a spider web that you feel but don’t see, and after a minute of flailing around like a mad man, you’d be sufficient that you were removed from it, and it from you. But, you’ve only made things worse. It’s still there, and as the years go by, it just grows and grows, heavier and stronger each time, like layers and layers of webs growing and growing in the attic, but eventually, the house will be covered in it. And one day, you’ll wonder where all the noise went.

I don’t remember, so please don’t ask me to find it. Instead, I will describe for you what I see, and what it means, and why I can’t unlock it all.

I see a blank room. Often, when we think of blank, we think of blank of a canvas, so we imagine a white room. But this room, is not white, it is blank. I don’t remember the day I walked into the room, but I remember something I’d heard from a blind man. A man asked him,

‘Is it like sitting in the pitch dark, or like a light so bright it blocks out all?’

To which the man said,

‘What I see is the same thing we all see out of the back of our heads. Nothing.’

Blank. And that is where I sit, and from where I write.

And in the blank room where I am, there is a vast number of doors; doors that swing and slide, doors that melt and mold, doors that open only after you have first closed them, doors that must be entered upside down. The doors all lead to their own rooms, rooms that are not blank, but full of feelings and thoughts. These rooms are wonderful and trapping and if you spend too long in them, you’ll forget why you ever entered them in the first place. Although, I suppose that’s why we walk through doorways; to be away from where we once were.

But once you want out, once you realize that you miss the noise, that the beauty and euphoria is nothing without the chaos, you need only find the key. No door in the blank room needs a key except one. The only one that matters to you. The Door with the Keyhole.

This is how the game changes; you went through the doors, dreamed of the rooms and spent every waking hours wondering about their contents; but the moment you ask for their release, for the noise to be returned, the fear of a thought falls into you: which one holds the key?

For, there must be a key, right? Why would a door have a keyhole, but no key? But you know that there is no key in the blank room; the blank room is blank, apart from the doors. But, the rooms, the rooms beyond the doors, the key must be there; it HAS to be there.

The search is painful; something that once brought joy, that nourished and filled you with wonderful thoughts has now spoiled. The euphoria is now a cloud that fogs the path. The colors become a distraction, tricking and confusing. Feelings of calm and keep now trigger panic, panic that the rooms might keep you, like they keep the key.

And then one day, or month, or year, or millennium, you will sit down in the blank room. You will sit down and admit defeat, just as I do now, broken and blistered, worn and without hope, hope that you’ll hear the noise again…

I write to you from here, the blank room, the room with the keyhole door, I write to you that you don’t walk through the door as I have done. Do not fall for the euphoric feelings and colored lies that lie beyond the doors. I wish I had not, but it is only by walking through that you learn, and it is only by learning that you will regret.

It is by destiny that I write to you, I think, knowing that you may do the same as I have done, or see my words and walk through the door anyways. Maybe you are stronger than me. Maybe you see the missing piece that I cannot.

Or maybe you, unlike I, will remember that the door is unlocked; that you can simply walk back outside; that you can leave and go home and pet your dog and feed your cat and hug your kids and kiss your partner; that the only thing that is stopping you is the noise, the noise that you crave so much, and the knowledge that I’ve been gone too long, and the noise has moved on without me, so when I hear it, it grates and snakes and writhes in my ears, and I find myself back in the room with the keyhole wondering, wondering, where the key must be, because as long as I don’t have the key, I can never leave the blank room that holds its grips on me.

Maybe you, unlike me, will discover why this room exists, and what the key must be.