The Door Girl, Part 38

I can remember that day vividly. We had been at the neighbor’s house who had a big inflatable pool in her backyard. We spent a lot of time there.

                  She was high as a kite. I watched her climb in to the pool with all of her clothes on. She was wearing a flimsy navy blue top with a full length skirt. She was stunning and elegant.

I watched her lower herself slowly in to the pool. The sun was an endless fire that day. I watched the look on her face and you would’ve sworn she had died and gone to Honolulu. With a drink in her hand and her body saturated with pool water, she became someone else. I don’t think my mother was ever happier than when she was not herself.

Again, from her journal:

Because that’s the thing. I’m happiest when I’m not myself. When I escape and hide behind whatever I can…I guess I never learned that lesson—to be a big girl and face my problems.

The Door Girl, Part 37

So, what was the unspeakable thing I did? This crime I committed that I likened to a suicide of the soul?

I became someone I wasn’t. I lived inauthentically. And when it’s all said and done, that is my goal—to be me.

To live as though you are someone else is the greatest crime one could ever commit. Just think of the art we are not seeing, the words we are not reading, the songs we are not hearing because people aren’t living authentically. It is, in fact, a suicide of the soul to prostitute your life to the highest bidder. I refuse to be that girl anymore.

This was found in my mother's journal:

What gets people is the damn monotony of the everyday—wake up, fill in the blanks, go to bed. It is those fill-in-the-blanks that get me. I feel lost. I don’t know what to do with myself that has any value. And so I sleep. I get high. I drink. I have sex with random men. I break things.

And so, I know it’s better for everyone if I just sleep. I take whatever pills I can find and whatever weed I can smoke and I just sleep and hide from my child. Because the best thing for her is when I am asleep.

It's like Ernest Hemingway says, "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"

I don’t want to be this way. The mediocrity of life and the fear of failure paralyzes me.

Sometimes, I just want to get in my car and drive…

The Door Girl, Part 36

I have been given beauty for ashes. When we buried one of our sweet babies, the preacher, said, “The seed that goes in to the ground bears much fruit” (John 12:24). It brought me to tears. I didn’t want to bury my baby in the ground. But what I wanted and what I got were very different things. What I didn’t understand at the time is that graces come later.

The gifts I’ve been given are remarkable. Grace, humility, compassion. My baby that I never once held in my arms bore so much fruit in my life and consequently, in to the lives of others. We planted a peach tree for them. This year was the fullest it’s ever been. Each summer I am reminded that something always needs to die in order to come back to life.

The Door Girl, Part 34

Here is what you are asking yourselves right now. Did the little girl survive? Did she get married and have children? Go on to have a successful life? And the answers are oh so many.

I did have children. Six beautiful children. I have loved fiercely and suffered pain that feels unbearable at times.

But I know I'm not alone. I know there are others out there who have suffered like me, even if it is the secrets that we keep.

I have experienced joy unabounded.

My life...my life has been reckless at times. I have been foolish. I have gone mad. Literally. I have died and come back to life. I have fallen in love with the Universe, God, whatever you prefer to call It. 

Mark 5:41

And he took the damsel by the hand, and said to her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say to you, arise. I'm crazy, confused, beautiful. So at the end of the day when you ask me if I came out okay, I give a resounding, "Yes!!" with a smile on my face because I am a survivor. My life is art. It is imperfect because all of art is. If my life were a hand-knit scarf, you would be able to detect all of the blemishes in it, but the scarf would still be beautiful and provide what it was meant to give: warmth.

The Door Girl, Part 35

Here is what you are asking yourselves right now. Did the little girl survive? Did she get married and have children? Go on to have a successful life? And the answers are oh so many.

I did have children. Six beautiful children. I have loved fiercely and suffered pain that feels unbearable at times.

But I know I'm not alone. I know there are others out there who have suffered like me, even if it is the secrets that we keep.

I have experienced joy unabounded.

My life...my life has been reckless at times. I have been foolish. I have gone mad. Literally. I have died and come back to life. I have fallen in love with the Universe, God, whatever you prefer to call It. 

Mark 5:41

And he took the damsel by the hand, and said to her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say to you, arise. I'm crazy, confused, beautiful. So at the end of the day when you ask me if I came out okay, I give a resounding, "Yes!!" with a smile on my face because I am a survivor. My life is art. It is imperfect because all of art is. If my life were a hand-knit scarf, you would be able to detect all of the blemishes in it, but the scarf would still be beautiful and provide what it was meant to give: warmth.