Hello.
How the hell did I end up here?
I’m writing my first blog with my laptop propped up on my knees, since I’m crouched down in a dim, narrow, metaphorical hallway, my back leaning against one of the many locked doors that are in here. I am currently residing smack in the middle of an overused cliché, ‘when one door closes, another opens’.
I’ve been in this dark corridor for six months now, ever since one big door slammed in my face after I was unceremoniously pushed through it. Yup, that’s right, fired for the first time since I was 21 when they let me go from my waitress job at a faux-fancy restaurant near the airport, because I didn’t empty the ashtrays fast enough. After being a tireless, creative classroom teacher for 25 years, I was inexplicably let go without reason from a private school I job held for three years. While I was still in shock, I thought I’d just go back to my old job in the public school system, but when I tried that door, it was shockingly …locked.
Since then, I’ve spent all my time knocking on all kinds of doors in this hallway, doors big and small, weird and familiar. Lots of doors. So far, no one has answered my sometimes insistent rapping, and my knuckles are getting sore. I have a lot of keys on the chain that God gave me, but so far, none of them fit in the locks. I stand in front of all kinds of unlikely doors, (even a coffee shop!) inwardly incanting Open Sesame!, like Ali Baba, and hoping the magic entrance will spring open and I will walk out of this dark hallway and like Dorothy, be standing in Technicolor Oz, munchkins singing all around me.
I know there must be A Reason for my current predicament. Perhaps my soul was yearning for something else, but if that was the case I wish my soul would speak up now and tell me what the hell it wants me to do. I’ve been paying close attention to my dreams, writing them down every morning, searching for clues. My faith waivers, huge roiling tsunami type ebbs and flows of doubt and elation. When the tide is low, I imagine I am In Control, and delude myself into thinking that I need to hurry this process along, and if I don’t, doors in front me will remain forever closed,
When I was in one of these moods recently, I went to Home Depot and bought two doors, one sliding glass, the other double French, to the tune of a grand slapped on my credit card. Many would (and did) say that this was not the best use of my money when I was on Unemployment with no future means of support. But the metaphor was that important to me. I needed to see new physical doors in front of me. Doors that I could open. One of the doors is still in the factory wrapping in my garage, but the other one has been installed on a former blank wall. I open this new door frequently, just to assure myself I still know how.
And so I remain in this strange hallway, looking for a little beam of light. When I was on Alcatraz recently to see the Ai Wei Wei exhibit, I stood in the pitch black isolation cell and listened to the ghost prisoner’s voice on my audio tour describe how he would concentrate in the dark until he saw a point of light, and then he would focus on that pinpoint of light until a world opened up for him, “like watching TV,” he said. I’ll try and report any images I see on my own personal TV in my head, here.
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