He was staring at a door. It was a familiar white door with very little detail. He did not like this door. He did not like it because there was a whole lot of the unknown on the other side of this particular door and he was scared of the unknown. He began to hate this door, hated what it stood for. Here was a literal door that stood for all the metaphoric doors that he had had in his life. It was as if this door had a mirror on it making him take a good hard look at himself. Yep, this was the door of doors. Hate was an understatement of how he felt about this door.
Why did he continue to stand in front of the door if he hated it so much? Why did he just not walk away and leave this particular door alone? Right now his biggest urge was to run, run until this door could no longer haunt him. However, he knew that could never happen. He knew that if he walked away from the door he would never come back and him being here right now only inches away would haunt him for the rest of his life. Slowly he reached out an open hand and touched it. It was smooth and cool. He leaned his head against it letting the coolness radiate from the door to his brain, hoping that it would calm his thoughts. He was obsessed with this door.
As the coolness of the door spread across his head he came to think about how he had gotten to this point, how he came to be in front of this door.
He had arrived a few minutes ago by car. It had been a nervous drive and surprisingly short. He gripped the door as he thought about how short the drive was. This door had not been that far from where he had been yet in his mind this door could have been a million miles away isolated on some small inaccessible island. He had spent many nights in the bottom of a bottle to keep this door out of the little consciousness he had possessed at the time. He thought about how nice this cool door would have felt to lay his head against each morning when the hangovers of the night before threatened to split it in two.
He chuckled silently to himself. I am going mad he thought. Over a damn door, a door he had walked through multiple times without a problem. That was until about two years ago, then it became the door of doors, never to be walked through again or so he thought.
Had it really been two years? Two years of burying himself with drugs and alcohol and anything else that dulled the senses. What he really was trying to dull and bury was his pain and shame. Had he succeeded? No, not really, he may have dulled it but he was never able to bury it.
What had he been before this? Had he ever been just a regular person, a person who did not need his senses dulled? He supposed he had been at one time. What happened? That is simple, he happened. He took everything he had ever loved and cared about and threw it in the preverbal trash. Seeing his faults now were easy as hindsight usually is but why could he not of seen them sooner?
He had had a wife once, a beautiful extraordinary woman that gave him an amazing gift. The gift of Love. Everything they had had come from that love, their children, their house, his job. Everything came from her loving him and what did he give her in return? A marble stone chiseled with the words beloved wife and mother.
He carried her obituary in his wallet everywhere he went since the day it showed up in the paper. A small but big reminder everyday of the mistakes he made and the devastation he caused. He once nearly killed a man in a drunken rage when the man used the tattered news paper clipping as a coaster for his whiskey bottle. He had been lucky that time, the man lived but decided not to press charges because he did not want the cops noising around his place and find certain things they should not. After that he no longer took it out of his wallet but he had the words on it memorized.
Elizabeth Marie (Stevens) Lucas, 27, died on October 5th. She is survived by her husband John Lucas and two children Alyssa, 5, and Alexander, 7, other survivors include her parents Margaret and Otis Stevens, a sister Lily Curtis and her family, and a brother Jeffery Stevens. The funeral will be Friday October 10th at Smith and Rhodes Funeral Home starting at 3pm.
It was a very small obit but the family thought it best to keep details short. How do you write that the deceased woman was married to a middle class man who broke her heart, and in her despair thought it best to take her own life. There are some things best left untold, at least to the public. That did not stop them of course to share the details behind closed doors. Doors like the one he stood leaning against at this very moment. News flew fast about his infidelity after her death, and everyone that could was quick to point out that if it was not for him his wife would still be alive. That she would still be here to laugh and to love. He did not need to be told he knew. He knew that his mistake took away the only thing in his life that mattered. He could not remember the reasoning behind his mistake, he seemed to have successfully buried that piece of history. All he knew then and now was that it was the one of the worse thing he had ever done and wished that he could have taken it back as soon as it happened. But he could not and she was still gone and he was to blame.
In his mind everything after that night, after finding her, was a blur. He was not sure when his lips first touched the bottle but he knew they never left after that. Anything to make it go away, to make them go away. Buy them he meant her family. Oh how they hated him, hell he hated himself. They all made it civilly through the funeral then the shadow of his mistake became an all consuming fire that took no hostages. He let them blame, after all it was his fault. He let them bury him with their hate. It should have been him in the ground not her and they told him every chance they got.
Was it before or after hitting the bottle that he stood at this door for what he thought was the last time? He was not sure. It did not really matter anymore did it? He had done what a person should never do, at this door. He threw away what was left of his heart and sanity, he threw a way his children. He gave up what she had given and left him. The last time he stood before this door he turned his back and walked away leaving two innocent beings with their aunt. They did not know, they did not understand what horrible thing had taken place, what their father had done. They were the only creatures in the world that did not place blame and he just threw them away.
Now he stood at the very same door where he had made his greatest sin. The door of doors. He hated this door. He hated it because in it he saw his own self loathing and his own cowardice. Why then did he stay? What had brought him back? There was a time when to touch this door would be to catch ablaze and burn for eternity. Why then was he here leaning against as if nothing could feel better?
It was because something had changed. Something with in him had changed. He was not exactly sure what had changed because the past cannot be undone, but he did know when he first experienced this change. It started three months ago with a man, a man who he would probably never see again but who he would owe his life to forever.
He had fallen asleep on a park bench after a night of drinking and drugging. He could not remember exactly what he had done or who he had done it with, which is usually how he liked it. The less he remembered the better. Rough nights like that one usually ended in the park, at the bench Elizabeth picked to read one of her mystery novels in solitude. Somehow he felt safe there. Most of the time he would just sit in a drunken stupor other times he would curl up in a ball and pass out. In the mornings he would awaken to the brightest noisiest place on earth with a headache the size of Texas.
The particular morning in question he dragged himself to the point to oblivion to find he was not alone on his bench. Beside him sat an elderly man who did not seem the slightest bit bothered seated next to a grown man curled into the fetal position and smelling like a toilet. He did not know if it was his hangover but the man seemed abnormally content sitting there reading his book. The man did not even raise an eyebrow when he straightened up and stretched his aching limbs; he never woke from nights like that one feeling anything other than week old garbage.
Shifting his position and glancing over he noticed the man was reading a mystery novel that his wife use to fancy. He did not like this man. He did not like sharing his bench. He enjoyed the fact that people normally gave him a wide birth. What was this man thinking? The man looked as if he had lived a hundred years and needed to be lying in some hospital bed. How could a man have so many wrinkles? He willed the man to take his book and leave, but the man continued to seat there read his book and ignore the drunk beside him. He thought about leaving himself, leaving the old man to his book, but instead he just sat there staring out into the park.
When the man finally spoke it made him jump, “Rough night?”
For such an old man his voice was surprisingly youthful and vibrant. He could not remember what his reply was but he did remember looking down into his hands as shame teetered to the edge of his thoughts. He must had said something because the man put down his book and looked at him.
“I’ve had a few nights like that myself, you know. It was a long time ago but I remember them as if they were yesterday,” At this the old man laughed. “What is your name son?”
“John”
“Well John. My names Sam, Sam Penny,” he grinned.
He remembered wanting the man named Sam to go away and leave him alone on his bench.
“Can I tell you something John?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well John, I remember nights like you had last night. I think I might have even woken up on a couple benches myself. But you know something it was because I was running away from something. I ran to that bottle like it would save me from the boogey man.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say, and don’t interrupt an old man you could be hearing his last bit of wisdom before he parts for the great unknown. Anyways where was I…ah yes, running away. Well it like this, I’ve made many mistakes in my life, so worse than others. It’s the worse ones I was running away from. When I reached a point where I could go no lower I met a man that told me what I’m about to tell you.” At this point he remembered the intensity he felt from Sam’s eyes boring into the back of his head as he looked into his hands.
“He told me ‘Son you need to detox’…”
“What?”
“He told me to detox and remember don’t interrupt. At first I thought the man was talking about detoxing from alcohol. He said I needed to do that to but what he was talking about was detoxing from myself, from my self pity, from my shame of whatever I had done. He said the alcohol, the women, and the drugs were all covering up the real problems and it was the real problems I needed to detox from. He said our memories and emotions are sometimes worse than all the other stuff, and are harder to detox from because their naturally apart of us and their things that we shove deep down not wanting to deal with. I laughed in his face. He told me I might not see it then but I was only in my thirties and I had an entire life time ahead of me if the other stuff didn’t get around to killing me first. He said that in that time span there will be a lot more mistakes that I’ll make and some of them will be worse than the ones I’ve already done so the ones that I’ve already done are only small obstacles. That was not at all comforting. I asked him what if I had killed a man would that be considered a small obstacle. At that point he laughed at me. He said in no way was he condoning murder and if I had then I would have to pay for what I’d done, but in the big picture of things if I changed my ways I could begin to atone for all the mistakes I had made even if that meant killing a man. He said there were a whole lot of people out there that could benefit from a man looking for forgiveness. He said that somewhere there was someone who needed something from me whether it was a girl, a man, or a child and here I was wasting away not helping them in their time of need. I asked him how, how do I detox from myself. He said first you start by detoxing from the physical stuff like booze and drugs so you can be clear headed when you detox from the real stuff, the stuff you tried to bury in the first place. He said next I needed to quit punishing myself for things that happened that I can no longer change, it’s in the past and needs to stay there. Then he said I needed to digest all those emotions I never wanted to digest. The more I digested them the less they’d effect me. But the most important thing I need to know was that I couldn’t do it by myself. People were not made to isolate themselves from others he said. We are social creatures. He said accept it from God or accept it from a psychologist or both but that I had to accept help or it wouldn’t work. He said detoxing from alcohol would take months but that detoxing from yourself would take years and that in the end it would be worth it. Then he did the same thing I’m about to do.”
At this Sam got up and patted him on the shoulder.
“He left me alone to think and digest what he had said. And you know he was right, there was someone that needed me, and I wasn’t doing them any good by staying unconscious all the time. I don’t know if what I told you will make a difference in your life but I have faith that it you’ll think it over and one day you’ll hopefully make the same decision I made.”
He watched through tear stained eyes as Sam walked away. What did he know; causing your wife to take her own life and throwing away your own children are things you cannot forgive. Right?
That night he didn’t go out and he didn’t drink or do any drugs. That night he curled up in his bed and cried, cried like he had never cried before. Could forgiveness be possible, forgiveness for everything he has done and everything that has happened. His mind told him the old man was foolish and senile, but there was another very small thought that asked, what if he is right.
He did something that night that he had not done since he was a child, he talked to GOD. It was more than a prayer, it was a verbal book of all the things in his heart that needed to be voiced.
Now three months later he was here leaning against a door he thought he would never see again completely sober and scared to death about what he would find on the other side. Here he was after weeks of rehab and AA. Was he ready? Was he ready for the rejection? Or better yet what if he was accepted? Reject was simpler at this point, acceptance would mean there were things to think about, to say, and to do. What would he do then? To many possibilities, but he was here and he had to make a choice.
He took a step back and looked at the door again. Still white, still plain. He no longer hated the door. It was decision time. He raised his hand and knocked.