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The
Closed Door
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Gerri Okafor
A lot of times in our lives, we tend to look at life as just a journey where we are constantly on the move. This in theory holds true because of the fact that we should always be moving forward in life. I for one tend to look at life as if it consisted of rooms, doors, windows and all sorts of openings that let in good fortunes and emits the bad. I like to look at life that way because it helps me make sense of where I am going, where I am at the present and how far I have come. To achieve this process, I have what I call my back, my front and side doors or windows. When I need to assess how far I have come in life, I tend to open up my back door or windows and gaze in to the my past misfortunes and successes, my trials and tribulations as well as my great fortunes and happy times. These things always work hand in hand they say, the positive and the negative, for they both exist to ensure a good balance in life. When living in the moment becomes overwhelming and I feel the need to pause for a second to catch my breath, I open my side doors to remind my self of my current location. My side door is made up family and good friends who are always there to nudge me along and remind me that I’m truly loved and cherished. This side doors also brings me a sense of fulfillment and great joy by reminding me of how fortunate I am to be where I am. It has become sort of like a ‘stop and re-fuel’ process for me on this journey through life. My front door needless to say, keeps me focused on the journey ahead, reminding me that moments of greater happiness lies ahead, as well as the future obstacles to overcome. The constituents of my front door is impossible for me to list, but being the optimist that I am, I always like think of it as a beautiful angel cradling my happiness in the palm of his hands. I am yet to be proven right.
Lately, I seem to be concentrating more on my back door, because for some odd reason I may have left it open longer than I should. They say the best method of preventing yourself from achieving your true potential is to become stuck in the past and this has been the case for me. I opened up my back door a year ago because I thought there was something there I needed to retrieve or rather something I needed to confront in order to move on into the future. But my belief that there was this thing somewhere back there that needed me to resuscitate it back to life engulfed me so much that I failed to realize that when something is dead, it needs to be left alone. So for a year, I tugged on to this lifeless thing in my past with the hopes that somehow, miraculously it would be brought back to life. I held on for months, saying my prayers each night, hanging on to the hopes that it would come back to life the next day and we or rather I would continue on this journey. Just like most people who actually believe that life is an onwards journey, mine had become a backward journey, and a rather painful one too. I had became so absorbed in my mission to give life to this thing I was holding on to that I actually forgot to open up my front windows to let in the rays of a brighter tomorrow.
Opening up my back door, I glossed over the most painful moments of my life, rehashing it over and over till it became overbearing. I tried to make sense of why it happened and how I could have handled it better, while in reality, those events of were inevitable and out of my realms of control. Revisiting my back door did not only comprise of pain, like I pointed out earlier, it also consisted of the negative and positive forces of life that helped propel me forward and the positive forces of healing was what I found. I received the healing of reconciliation along with the negative effects of betrayal, but most importantly, the beautiful power of forgiveness and goodbye. I learned that in as much as I hated my self or the other individual for the events that occurred in the past, there was no way I could have prevented it or handled it appropriately then but I certainly gained positive insights on handling it better for the future, should it ever come up.
Today, after being stagnant for nearly a year, I decided to do the unthinkable. I decided to shut my back door and open up my front doors and windows. It was time to let go of this lifeless thing I had been lugging on my back and let it remain dead, the way it should be. I had come across an article on the internet from Dr T.D Jakes entitled, “Let it Go.” and it was the push I needed to seal my back doors. As I read through the lines of the article, I felt liberated and relieved. A huge sense of relief and amazing burst of energy came over me in terrifying gushes. At that moment, I realized that I could not go through life looking through my back doors, and that indeed life would not be the same if we spent it moving backwards.
The past is called the history because it truly is in all essence, events that form a subject matter of the past, one that is finished and done with. In this road of life, it makes more sense to always move forward than backwards, and even if we have to move backwards, it should only be to learn more on why we made a stop and we proceed.
I have learned a great lesson about my life through the opened back door. I re-connected with the part of me that needed healing and understood better, my place in this cycle called life. I relished in the healing power of forgiveness, while basking in the amazing force of goodbye, in great hopes of attaining my happiness. I sealed my back door closed; I no longer needed it for its purpose has been served. I opened my side doors and re-fueled. Life is a journey and we should all make that conscious decision to keep moving forward and let our back doors remain closed.
So I held on
I held on to the thoughts of you and me together before,
Caressing and comforting each other.
I held on to the “we” that would overcome all things for that
Was the promise we made to each other.
I held on to the couple whom in everyone’s eyes looked so
Cute together but deep down inside we were dying.
I held on so tight that I was afraid my fingers were going numb.
Maybe I needed it to go numb along with my heart which is now so
Cold that any change in you will not be felt
Change; Did I say change? I held on to the hope that you will change
Eventually and we will go back to who we used to be. Not the
cute couple dying inside, but the cute couple loving each other to no bounds
But we did we have bounds. We had boundaries sacred to us; you
crossed that boundary and my heart went cold. So cold that I forgot
What it felt like to be benevolent or admired or loved.
Loved; Did I say loved? Yes loved. I deserve to be loved and I do
realize it now. I have a life time of love ahead of me so why hold on to the past.
I will not hold on to what is not mine,
Because what’s mine will not let my heart go cold.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: In her words: My name is Gerri Okafor, and I currently live in NJ. I work full time and on my free time I love to write. I enjoy writing on experiences that has touched me and also on the things about life that interest me. I also love to read and I intend to turn one of my short stories in to a novel soon. I love the outdoors and I also enjoy traveling a lot.
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