One Door

They love to say,

when one door closes, another one opens

like the universe is an accommodating Airbnb host who leaves the key under the mat

and a handwritten note on the entryway table that says:

WELCOME! FRESH START!

As if closure is clean.

As if doors always close gently.

As if some doors don’t slam so hard they come right off the hinges.

Some doors don’t ever close.

Other doors get taken from you.

Some doors get locked

while you’re still inside the room

collecting your dignity off the floor.

Those are the rooms you never fully escape from.

And some doors—the worst ones—

close for a reason.

Real reasons that aren’t poetic,

just brutal.

Not “growth.” Not “a lesson.”

More like a warning label.

They’re not romantic chapters.

They’re closer to crime scenes.

And for some mysterious, mystical reason,

those are the doors I find myself most loyal to.

I go back like an idiot.

I make pilgrimages to the past in my mind

like a stray dog returning to the house where its owners once lived,

only to find the owners left it behind on purpose.

I knock

not like a stranger,

not like a solicitor or salesman

I knock like I paid rent here.

I knock like I left something of myself behind

and I’m coming to collect it.

Sometimes I don’t even knock.

Sometimes I just press my ear to the familiar wood

and listen for the old versions of me

still trapped in there,

still bargaining,

still saying maybe if I explain it better

they’ll finally understand my perspective,

they’ll tell me I’m not the problem.

But the door stays closed.

So I do what I always do

when I don’t get permission:

I pick the lock.

I pick at it like a scab

because I cannot stand the idea

that something happened

and then… didn’t get handled properly.

That it all just becomes past tense

without a trial,

without an apology,

without anyone looking me in the face

and taking accountability.

So I reopen it.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Because healing feels suspiciously like erasure to me.

When a wound closes, all that remains is a scar—

and scars are very rarely beautiful.

And if the wound closes,

and all that’s left is an ugly scar,

I get scared it means

it didn’t matter.

That I didn’t matter.

And the sickest, most twisted part is

how satisfying it is for half a second—

that sting.

That bright little flare of pain that says,

See? There it is. Proof.

Like suffering is the only language

I’m fluent in without translating.

But the thing about picking a scab over and over

is eventually it stops being a scab at all.

It becomes a large, open, gaping wound

and open wounds get infected.

Then suddenly I’m walking around

with history leaking out of me

like I’m the one who’s dangerous.

Meanwhile, somewhere,

another door is open.

A calm door.

A boring door.

A door that doesn’t require a part of my soul as a down payment.

Hell—maybe even a good, normal door,

whatever normal is supposed to mean.

But I keep choosing the locked one

because I’m addicted to the almost.

To the fantasy of redemption

from the very place that ruined me.

I keep going back

because my brain still thinks

closure is something you earn

by suffering beautifully enough.

That’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it?

Doing the same thing

going back to the same places

and begging the universe for a different result.

Some doors close

because that’s the only way you would’ve ever left the room in the first place.

Some doors are not meant to open again

because what’s behind them

doesn’t lead to a new life

it just keeps the past preserved

like a body in a freezer:

technically intact,

still dead,

still waiting for you to come identify it.

And I am tired of living in the past.

I am tired of confusing familiar pain for fate.

Tired of knocking on the same locked door until my knuckles become a bloodied prayer.

Tired of reopening myself for lessons I’ve already learned.

So if one door closes

and another opens,

fine.

Maybe I’m ready to move on and walk on through.

Because this time I’m not going back to what almost killed me

just to prove I can survive it again.

I’m learning to leave the past where it belongs.

This time I’m not confusing missing it

with belonging there.

This time I’m accepting some doors close because they were never meant to be the way home,

and the life I want was never on the other side

of the ones I’ve wasted so much time banging my head on.