The Locked Door

There is a locked door, at my place.

Probably I had better not call it “my place”, it’s just the place where I am. Maybe it would be more correct to say that I am it’s dweller rather than it being my place… Doesn’t make much of a difference, does it?

Whatever the case, there is that one door that doesn’t want me to go through. I roam, one room to the other, yet my path leads me back to that merciless obstacle, just one single locked door.

Where are my manners, I should at least say my name, shouldn’t I?

I am… actually… does that even matter? Does just one simple line of letters wrangled together even mean anything? Does that name make me more ME, more real, than the world around me, my story, my life?

Whatever the case I know who I am, and it doesn’t make much of a difference.

The place is massive, the meandering corridors are littered with doors, of uncountable shapes and sizes, not even one similar to another.

Had I had any ability in drawing maps I would have tried to keep track of my wandering, but I lack such a skill, and even if I could I’m sure this place cannot be mapped.

I wouldn’t call the place an house, I still haven’t found a living room or a kitchen or any other conventional room to speak of. It’s not even a maze, or a jail; the place feels alive more than anything else. The corridors intertwine and mingle, like those fractal images that appear to be moving and yet wait completely still at the same time.

Not once I passed a spot, in all the time I’ve been here, that was the same it was before, like a river that’s is always itself and yet every instant different from the other, so is this place alive and evolving.

Here it is again though. The locked door, slightly bigger, but it is the same door.

As always: the same, but different. Like everything here, there is nothing that ever stays the same.

It has been popping off more often, and every time it comes slightly bigger, more imposing, asking to be acknowledged.

All the doors in the place are closed, but open to just a touch. This one does not bulge. Yet it comes straight to my face. Why, why would it come to me and then refuse to open. Is it mocking me? Does it want me to open it or is it just a demonstration of force, the proof that I am actually powerless?

I reach for a door, any door but that one.

I remember this room, it’s cozy and a bit exciting. It has been a while since I felt like this, this music flowing in me. This room always feels like home, I don’t get here often enough. It used to be a little bigger though. Doesn’t take much before it runs out, and I got to go back in the corridor. It is not the same corridor it was before, but there’s nothing strange, it’s always like that.

I pick another door, feels like a stroll on the seashore, sweet with a pinch of awe, the salty breeze tingling my nostrils. But this room ends before I can get my lungs to fill, I had the time for just a taste, then, back in the corridor.

Back in the corridor, once again that terrible door, massive, almost buzzing in its dreadful power. It feels like ice in the marrow of my bones, it stares at me, it’s overwhelming presence crushing me.

I look around, there are no other doors.

As far as I can see there is only that ominous door. I know for sure that the corridors always lead to all the doors, no need to fret, just walk I’ll find something.

I go on strolling down the corridor, feels like an eternity before I get to a door, but here it is. This one is old, I remember it, so I dive in. It’s like touching the papers of a loved book, this room, it’s sweet and a bit lonely, but, just like that it fades. Not the time to savor the moment, and back in the corridor, in front of that monstrous door.

I quicken my pace, I need to distance myself from that door, reach any one but that one.

The corridors feel infinitely long, but here and there I find my doors, I poke in all the rooms that cross my path, but they’re all too small and run out too quickly. And when I get out, there is always my enemy waiting for me outside, the other rooms always further apart, harder to reach.

There is no mercy for me. The locked door in front of me, and an endless empty corridor at my side. I can try to run, I will find a different room, but then again the situation will repeat itself again and again.

I tried, eh!

Well, I have to admit that I lied, the time has come to be honest. Doesn’t make much of a difference though.

The thing is... the door isn't actually locked. It looks so frightening, so hostile, it’s natural to think that it’s locked, isn’t it? But it is just like the other doors, I simply don't want to get in.

By the way, I am not given many choices, right?

To the lightest of touches the door opens, and it catapults me a room of fear and pain. It’s a shipwreck and I tumble between splinters of my broken mind, tossed around by tidal waves of anguish and despair.

The room is big as an ocean, it has no end, I didn’t want to face this, the weight on my shoulders, the dismay in front of the darkness, the loneliness and the anger, the pain, the pain WHY WHY, I will never get back to normal, to my corridors my rooms, the waves crashing on me again and again, dragging me further and further away from my place.

I don’t know how long I endured. I don’t know where I found the strength to hold on.

Somewhere I found it though, like a castaway hanging to the timbers landing on a distant shore.

Weary and bruised I wander through my place, the rooms are broad and full, I can breath them in to the depths of my lungs.

Somewhere I found my strength.

It kind of makes all the difference.