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.

Note: this essay is written from the perspective of the fictional character Malia Blu.

I like to imagine a boat. A single boat just waiting for me out in the stars. If I close my eyes, I can feel the tranquility of the night washing over my body and hear the rippling of the waves tremble against the wood. There is a nothingness and everythingness in my imagination. A chaos and a calm.

When I open my eyes, I’m stuck. Breaths linger in my chest and my feet fasten to the dirt. Fog swarms my body and moisture clings to my skin. I can reach forward, but cannot see what I grasp until it's already in my hands. I’m lost from a life I never knew. A family I never had the chance to know. I am sinking through the earth and all that can catch me is myself.

Does this make sense? Am I making any sense?

Probably not. I barely make sense to myself. Yet this image of the boat makes more sense to me than the reality that consumes me every day. It's exhausting. The questions. My own, others’. They dig at me, at the unknowns, and sometimes I wish everyone could stop caring. That I could stop caring.

And that’s why I need this boat. So I find this boat, even if only for a few seconds, waiting for me among the stars of my imagination.