When you reach the door, you fall against it and its weight is much sturdier than you would have suspected. With a fingertip you trace the carved letters, and a tiny shudder wracks your body as truth communicates itself from the simple touch of flesh on wood.
Sighing, for you have come so far to be once more enveloped in darkness, you bring the key up to the keyhole with a hand that shakes, betraying your steely resolve. It will or it won’t, you think idiotically. It will or it won’t, it will or it won’t, it will or it won’t. Seconds before you attempt the single most important act of your life, you take a deep breath, close your eyes, and insert the key.
It fits! Overjoyed, your eyes fly wide open, and you stare in astonishment. It fits, it turns, I’m home at last and no returns! you singsong in your head. As the door clicks open you catch the tail-end of an eerie song so infused with the childlike wonder of truth that it swirls and leaps out at you, alive with the power of things that are untainted with the world’s lies. Someone inside of you giggles with joy, and you clamp a hand over your mouth in shocked dismay.
But of course, you tell yourself out loud, of course, of course! There’s bound to be other voices! You’ve left the door ajar, not willing just yet to cross its threshold into the land of no-turning-back, recognizing intuitively that to do so is to say goodbye, however reluctantly, to what-might-have-been. Recognizing as well that to embrace the one is to dismiss-forever-the other.
Oh, but for now it is enough to stand this side of the threshold and cherish this time of knowingness, to savor the sensation of sensing all the shattered bits and pieces of your life falling into place into some kind of discernible shape. Enough to stand here, just now, with the key protruding from the open door (and what a warm rush of affection you feel for this magical key!), and know that you have always, in some fashion, lived in what society would label an alternate reality.
This is merely the beginning of your journey, or perhaps in some fashion, its middle. You have many more miles to put on your soul, but you don’t realize that yet—or suspecting as much don’t care, for you have made a choice, the most critical choice of your life. And for now, that is more than enough.
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