In everything there is a door...

"Maybe there is no certain way to be happy. Maybe there are only maybes." - Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet

There are doors you step through that close behind you. Entrances without exits. Paths you take that never lead you back the way you came. There are moments when you realize that you're more afraid of doorways than you are of being enclosed. You're scared of the dark. Scared of being alone. Afraid of your own shadows. All the ones hidden. All the ones you can name. But what scares you more is the tender hunger thumping in your chest that refuses to callous no matter how many times it breaks.

Seven hundred and forty-two pounds of horizontal force to shatter ribs. Direct crushing blows. That something like a heart, something so fragile and so foolish, so poorly guarded and so easily scathed, is carried exposed in a world of blunt objects, is proof that love is as beautiful as it is dangerous.  

You build a puzzle-box to hide your heart in. Secret compartments and false gates. You keep it hidden. You keep it safe. But some doors won't stay quiet no matter how hard you try to keep them closed. Some hearts tell tales. A tender fist of hope and soft muscle pounding on the floor. Love is a heart made of ventricles and unrest, choosing risk and perilousness.  Love is another kind of door. Not a way out, but a better way through.

In the incredible welcome of the world unfastening in a breath, you take a risk. You take a chance. You try.

You push a key into a lock. Jagged lines and crooked grooves. The press of something sharply carved shifting  against the precision of pins and springs. A tumbler turns and pulls back a bolt. You open a door you swore you'd keep sealed. A door you almost forgot was even there. A door to somewhere unimagined and unimaginable. Some place unseen. An opportunity. An opening. A place where providence comes to speak. Where possibility leads.

Maybe you let yourself out. Maybe you let someone in. Maybe it's good, maybe it's better, maybe it's perfect, maybe it hurts, maybe it doesn't go according to plan, maybe it's devastating, maybe it breaks you in two. Maybe wholeness is the sum of all things broken, maybe the pieces are doors to infinite worlds.

“When the sky falls, use it as a blanket”, Stephanie Foo says. When your heart breaks, use it as a door.

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