Doors

I know I just walked through one of them. A doorway. An exit. A vestibule into another existence. The start of another chapter. A change of events that separated this second from the last, wedging its demarcation vividly like a thin red line on a map. An evolution of sorts on an unconscious level. A fragment of soul, falling away. A snake shedding its skin. Slow and viscousy movements. Seconds, microseconds, nanoseconds, seconds halved, quartered, segmented by the hundredth. Dead skin and dust shaken off. Without too much exertion on my behalf. Escorted almost. A sense of loss overpowered by a gradual wave of giddy happiness of having regained myself, breaking over me in slow motion. So slow that I almost don't recognize it. I feel nothing of it till the water rose to my waist. Closure, perhaps? I'm almost afraid to hope. That maybe, I have put it behind me.

We walk through these doors often.These exits in the time and space of what we call growth. Like an extra inch taller - another higher marking on the wall. Like the first spot of blood which becomes a monthly ritual. The cracked voice that begins with the sound of a chair being dragged and deepens into bass and maturity. Puberty. A childhood left behind. A car license, A voter's id. The threshold of adulthood. Milestones. Legally allowed to get laid. Legally allowed to get sloshed and wasted. Legally accountable for your actions. The driver's seat is finally yours. To crash or to get somewhere is entirely up to my discretion.

Another dent in the clay that would fashion the being you are. Physical and subtle.

Somewhere an equation has changed. The balance tilted, shifting the earth off its axis and exercising its own laws of gravity. Priorities pulled off their pedestals and shelves. "Things are different now." Contentment lies beneath the debris of broken redundant would-haves and should-haves.Altering of circumstances that need straightening out. Without knowing, I had walked through a doorway. As surely as someone walked over my grave. A trapdoor opened somewhere, a part of me fallen through, smashed into a million pieces, never to be whole again. A first time. A last time. I know I have changed.

Nothing would ever be the same again. The point of no return. Exit. The end of the tunnel and into the light. Or maybe even vice versa. Curtains.