To the Door that Closed

I've been trying my hand at short stories and flash fiction.

So far, I haven't gotten anything published, but I'm glad to be building a thick skin when it comes to rejection. I'll need that when it comes time to query my novel.

There was a contest recently that was about the doors that closed in life. Instantly, I had a flood of ideas. For being as young as I am (I feel weird typing that, but it's what the elders say I am), there have been many proverbial doors shut in my face, but one that I needed to write about. I planned to submit, but missed the deadline because I was in an editing frenzy and couldn't be bothered to polish my piece. So, for your reading pleasure, here's what would have been my submission.

To the Door that Closed,

I often wonder what my life would look like if you hadn’t. And for a while, that curiosity defined me. You see, I loved you before I knew what love was. I didn’t have the words for the devotion I felt, how every nerve ending became a live wire when you were around. All I knew was if you asked me to jump, I would fly just to prove myself.

In you, I built my home. Four walls, shuttered windows, shingles, and a picket fence. It was safe, it was everything. A life without you was unimaginable. When I closed my eyes and pictured the future, it was always me next to you, learning, growing, building together. If it would be anything else, I didn’t want it. The vision of what could be was my North Star, and I followed it back to you on the darkest of nights.

Until one day I knocked and you didn’t answer. It was a simple question about my involvement in one of the biggest, happiest moments of your life. I was excited and nervous for you to move forward to a new chapter, but I believed in us. I believed we would come out stronger on the other side. When you finally opened the door, you pushed me off the porch, careening down the steps into the hard concrete path below. A world in which you and I weren’t side by side. When I dusted myself off and clawed my way up the stairs, I knocked my knuckles bloody trying to get you to let me back in.

But you didn’t.

The thing I thought we built, the home I thought I had, was in flames, ash and dust, a million particles flitting into the sky and blotting out the sun. And in that darkness, I realized there was no other side of this. At least not where you and I were a team, tackling life together. The unimaginable had arrived and it was dark and the air was thick. Breathing became a chore. Rebuilding became necessary.

I spent longer than I care to admit trying to figure out what I did wrong. What turn did I take on the road of our relationship that made me feel like litter discarded on the berm? As I sat on the steps, waiting for the smoke to clear, waiting for someone to extinguish the fire, I found that I was holding the hose.

In the smoldering remains of what I thought my life would be, I built something new. I took time to figure out what I wanted home to look like. The time and love I invested in you, I turned inward. It made my new foundation strong, steady, something that I never had before. Something I knew would not crumble because I was the sole builder.

The new frame went up, solid studs of insight and forgiveness. Through building, I learned what I needed and wanted. I forgave myself for the mistakes I made, for putting too much pressure and trust in things I did not control. The smoke cleared, the windows opened, joy, love, kindness, and care painted themselves on my four new walls. I was the architect of my new home and I’ve never been prouder of myself. Looking at it, you’d never know the charred remains of what once was are sitting just below the floorboards.

I’m grateful for the life I had before, but I’m more grateful for the spectacular immolation of it. I would never have found my own way living for the approval of someone else. I would never have found the beauty and truth of who I am and what I’m capable of when my guiding light was someone else.

And now, when I open the door so wide it might fly from its hinges, there’s a world outside that turns my nerves into live wires. There is a neighborhood of people and houses and wonder beyond my threshold that I never would have seen with my back turned toward it, trying to force my way into a home to which I did not have a key.