Behind The Door

Two steps, one turn of the hand, and zero seconds. That's what it takes for the past year to come crashing down around me. And that's all it takes. That door leads into the room that defined my existence, the room where everything changed, the room that I can't get out of my head. If I was to step in again, I don't know that I would be able to ever walk out.

The things that happened in my room...altered every single aspect of my life. From my personality, to my relationships with people, to my self-image, to my trust in friends. And in a way, I've spent the past year working to cleanse the memories of that room from my mind. I've been trying to forget it and move past what happened to me as a result.

But today I figured something out. I figured out that I'm never going to forget that room. I'm never going to be able to wipe clean the slate of memory, nor would I want to. Because although the occurrences there plunged me into a hell, they also taught me lessons I couldn't have otherwise come to understand.

Maybe I am lost and confused right now, maybe nothing makes sense in my life anymore, and maybe it really is a direct result of everything that had come to pass in that room. But regardless, I can't just expect to forget. I need to learn to set it aside and move on. Understanding it all would be nice, too...but the important part is just learning to live with it, make the most of it, and not let it control my life now.

So here I am, taking a step back from that door. I don't need to turn the handle, because it won't help me do anything with my life. I'm closing my eyes and letting the memories, painful as they may be, pass through my mind. And slowly, very slowly perhaps, I'm starting to rebuild myself, put the cracked pieces together, fill the void that has been there for a year. I think it's about time things started to come together again.