Doors [ h i a t u s ]

Doors [1]

We walk through many doors in our lives. We never really take the time to admire how much doors change our lives. Doors hold the utmost importance in our daily lives. Why, you may ask. A door separates us from two different worlds. In our homes, for example, when we shut the front door we are no longer in communication with the outside world. From the outside our homes look exactly what they are called: homes, but the inside holds so much more. Do you remember those movies where each house looks identical from the outside, but each of them look different on the inside?

A person is like a door. It’s a weird analogy really, but the explanation seems accurate. See, we believe that every door looks the same, but each of them hide what is going on in the inside. It’s like a barrier in a sense, much like a person. A door has its own cracks and scars much like we do. We have doors to protect us from the unknown; however, when we knock that door down we see exactly what is going on, on the inside. A person’s body protects others from their minds. We don’t know what’s going on behind a door, much less what’s going on behind a face. We never know what is actually happening on the other side of a door until we muster the courage to open it.

The only difference between doors and humans (besides the fact that doors are inanimate objects) is the fact that we never judge a door based on the outside, we judge the inside of what the door is hiding The contrast being we judge people based on the outside rather than what is on the inside.

That was the difference between me and the people around me. I have an unspoken respect for doors. Unspoken simply because people would think I were crazy if I told them my theory on doors. No one really understood my strange analogies, not that it was an issue. I enjoyed the fact that no one understood half of what came out of my mouth. It made me feel as though I had been gifted with a different perspective compared to others and to me that was okay.

I’d never come across someone who shared my gift. More often than not the people I ran into refused to listen to what I had to say and revealed their ignorance in such matters. I clearly remember a time when I stood up for the villains in a sleepover I was invited to at the age of seven. The other girls insulted me when I expressed my opinions on the ‘evil’ stepsisters in Cinderella. See I believed that we just rightfully assume that the evil villains are the ones in the wrong but maybe they’re merely taking a stand against society. The princess is society’s view of perfection and the evil villains are the ones that dare to take a stand against them. The argument would be forever engraved in my brain, not just because my mother was called to pick me up after the other girls grew upset and ‘un-invited’ me. I found it unreasonable considering my opinion was as valid as any and you can’t ‘un-invite’ someone from a sleepover when they’ve already been invited, I mean it’s just rude. 

That was the day I knew I was different. Though, different in other people’s views was also the meaning of wrong. I wasn’t mentally unstable nor was I incapable of using my brain, I was just… me. I was me, with all my strange analogies, my sarcastic remarks and my opinions. My parents never really spoke out as much as I liked for them to, they merely sat back and listened to my never-ending rants replying every now and then with a ‘that’s nice honey’ or ‘you’re on the right track sweetheart’. Nothing more, nothing less. I liked to engage in arguments with other opinionated people, though she was old and known as grandma.

All that changed when my teacher uttered five words.

“Class this is Greyson Montgomery.”

Greyson Montgomery, where do I begin? Greyson and I had been friends since the first day of kindergarten when we both had an intellectual argument about the brown colored pencil and how it is judged simply because it reminds others of poop. We believed that that was simply wrong because chocolate is also brown and people love that. We never go labeling chocolate as poop. That was the start of our beautiful friendship. I believed Greyson and I shared the same gift. He made me feel, well, not so different. Don’t get me wrong I never minded being the odd one out, but I had a friend who was just as much of an oddball as I and that was nice. That all changed the day Greyson decided to ditch me claiming I had cooties in the third grade, when we both knew what cooties actually were. Bugs. We did our research when the cootie epidemic began. Kids all across the country were claiming the other gender had ‘cooties’ it was quite a serious matter that we found necessary to know about.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” were the last words he said before he drifted away from me. We were nine at the time.

We hadn’t spoken in eight years after the tragic ending to our relationship and steered clear of the other’s path. He found a group of imbecilic friends that he could ‘relate’ to and I, well, I was on my own. We had an unspoken agreement to stay out of the other’s way. He lived his life, I lived mine.

All that changed the minute he slid into the empty seat next to me after being introduced by our teacher. I’m not going to lie, Greyson was a door, a very attractive door.

“Sup, the name’s Greyson.” He stuck his arm out in attempt to greet me.

I looked from him to his hand then back at him. It’s as though the poop argument and cootie research ceased to exist. All those afternoons with my grandma and our opinionated altercations were flushed down the toilet in the eight years we hadn’t spoken.

“Hey, I’m Greyson.” He tried again, a bit louder and more politely this time.

“Does this look like the countenance of a person that cares?” I replied, pointing to my face. I couldn’t blame him for not recognizing me. Since we last saw each other I had changed dramatically. My brunette hair was now a pale pink draping down the small of my back and my clothes represented my personality, different with a hint of strange.

“Nice to meet you too.” He mumbled under his breath. I gave myself a victory smile when I heard the annoyance in his voice. Greyson was one of ‘those’ boys. Every school has them. The ones that attend those horrid high-school parties (ones that often led to police raids) and the ones that take innocent members of the female gender and de-innocent them. Basically, Greyson transformed into the type of person I despised with every fiber of my being. He was popular, played on the football team, etc. Sometimes I questioned whether all those tackles influenced his stupidity. The one thing I hated most about Greyson Montgomery was the mere fact that he was always smirking. How someone can hold their lips upright for so long annoys me to no end. Every time I see him I have the urge to slap that smirk right off his face, but even then his malicious look may remain. Greyson held every quality I disliked in a person, more so a boy. Most of the time I believed it was to spite me but really it was just a part of his new persona. That was the difference between Greyson Montgomery and me. He had a new girl hanging off his arm every week and would much rather spend time doing god knows what god knows where whereas I had never had a boyfriend and would spend my nights with my grandmother having erudite conversations about a topic off the top of my head. Greyson and I were from completely different planets and the fact that I had once believed he shared the same opinions as I did then I must have had my fair share of delusional thoughts. The Greyson I knew was nothing but a figment of my highly imaginative imagination.

Everyone liked Greyson Montgomery, everyone except me. He may be an attractive door but he lacks what was behind the door. He lacks a kind personality. Greyson Montgomery was nothing but a nicely furnished door and he held no emotion within me other than betrayal.