There were two doors.
One was narrow and jagged. The other was round and open. My mother chose to go
through the open door. It hurt her like hell, it ripped her wide open, but she
knew it was the only way to survive. Do I approve of it? Do I think she did the
right thing? I’ll never know, because the life I had and didn’t have with her
are all I knew. It’s impossible to imagine what my life would have been like
with her presence.
I know I’m strong, however. I have been to hell and back
again a thousand times. Day upon day. And I continue to rise from the ashes.
Clumsily, yes. I am constantly losing my way and finding it back once again.
But I walk through the round, open door as well. I am exactly like my mother
and not a thing like her at all. I like to believe the thing on the other side
of my windowsill looks different than hers did. I know it’s different in fact.
Her door took her to men, drugs, alcohol and the point of madness. I discovered
these truths in her journals--what she had been doing all this time she had
disappeared.
My door must be different. And I’ll tell you a secret. I’m
deathly afraid that it’s not. And yet, I walk through the door, shaking and
scared. I listen to the universe and follow it. I allow it to gently guide me
by my jittering hands. I follow it in the dark like a lantern and see nothing
around me but stark branches. But I follow.
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