In a World Without Doors
There is exactly one closet in my house with a door. It’s tiny, no room to hang anything, and the hundred year horse hair plaster crumbles in bits and pieces onto the contents stored within. Maybe it’s no coincidence that we chose this house— there are no closets in my personal life either. I’m an open book: messy, complex, controversial, I lay everything on the table. Literally— physically, emotionally… no privacy for my thoughts or my sheets and towels.
Someone I care about confronted me recently. My words, given to the internet before his ears made him uncomfortable. It’s understandably hard to be my friend, my child, my husband (sometimes strangers know more about my life than they do) but I’m proud of the way that I choose to be me. I feel things fully. I think deeply. I always believe that change is possible and that the formula to create it is held in a combination of words and punctuation. Words are my therapy and stringing them together for others to feel is a way I offer medicine to the world. My voice, articulated much clearer in text than in conversation, is for better or for worse the legacy I will leave. My healing, as difficult as it may be for others to digest, is the imprint that will live beyond my body.
She said the hard things.
She wrote without a filter.
On a whim she poured her heart out.
An emotional & spiritual download, uploaded for others to witness.
She shared for herself, but she spoke for many.
I don’t just overthink, I overshop sometimes too. In my holiday overspending I decided I didn’t just need stocking stuffers, but that a four pack of black storage bins sitting awkwardly by the checkout was just what my open bathroom closet needs— a new facade for our toiletries and triage supplies. A visual barrier between our bathroom guests and the bottle of pepto bismol. A spruce up and declutter was long overdue, but after I unpackaged the new bins I realized they didn’t quite fit on the oddly sized open shelves.
Oops… I did it again: impulse, got the best of me. A snap decision that left me fumbling in frustration. A seemingly routine mistake… or not…
Have you ever emptied a closet (doors or no doors) and regretted your decision long before the project was complete. There I was surrounded by outdated travel shampoo two days before Christmas with storage bins that don’t even fit on the shelves I bought them for.
Of course I beat myself up. Doesn’t every overthinking human spiral through all the reasons she’s a failure when the mass produced plastic bins don’t fit in her 19th century house? I even decided they must be proof that I make bad money decisions. That my impulse is sabotage. I let the no good very bad thoughts come flying in, one after the next. But I also kept going. I persevered. I balanced my inner mean girl voice with reason and compassion. I had my own back and I kept going through the physical and mental discomfort.
I thought outside the norm.
I let go of what wasn’t working.
I took risks for the sake of improvement.
Now everytime I pee and I look into the open closet I smile. All that messy closet discomfort and in the end there is organized relief. The bins are fine! They don’t need to be perfect to serve their purpose. They were a well spent $16.99.
This collection of words is fine too. A well spent many minutes. A dumping of my mental mess gathered together to connect me with others who act impulsively, wonder what’s wrong with them, and in time realize “it’s not a me problem, when others don’t like the way I do it.”
My writing hides nothing in the closet. My lack of social filters (probably diagnosable) keeps nothing in the closet. My words and mess can make people uncomfortable, shock them with a jolt of feels. Force them to look inward or back or even forward into the unknown. Everytime I write it is an open invitation for connection. I write for myself, but I also write for you. I write especially for the YOUs who know no better way to make sense of the world than with words.
Together let’s keep writing. No matter whose feathers get ruffled.
