Keys

[dancingadopteethoughts]

This short essay is written from the perspective of fictional character Malia Blu.

They say that doors are meant to keep us in. To lock something inside. And that’s why we need keys. Except, I don’t have a key. I’m just a door, locked and sealed. A secret within.

What does it mean to keep a secret, especially one to yourself? I should know because I do it every day. I tuck the secret within myself, never allowing it to graze the surface. 

But doors have cracks too. And light can’t help but peek through. It reaches for the darkness. Clawing. Gnawing. And I keep my door locked. Preserving the darkness within.

Nevertheless, the light strains. Pulling at the dark. Expanding against the shadows. And as the day brightens, so does my gloom until it begins to take shape. Solidifying in the corner of my room.

I have a secret that I keep. From myself, my mothers, my sisters, my friends. I found something that I could know if I wanted to but I choose not to. And every day my body aches more and more to know.

I know that doors are meant for opening. For letting in sounds, lights, things, people. And there are people I could let in. I want to let in. I’m terrified to let in. People that are both intrinsically part of my life and indisputably not.

How can I let in the people who left me? Abandoned me? I crave to. I fear to. I…don’t know how to.

I dreamed of this moment when I first uploaded my DNA onto that site. I longed to know how it had ended this way, how I had ended up continents away from where I had been born. 

Now, with just one email, I can open that connection. I can defy years of silence, mystery, and yearning. I can be a key and not a door.

But will I truly learn more? Or will there only be more questions? That’s the thing with keys, sometimes they only lead you to more doors.