The Cracked Door

​The door isn’t shut. That’s the problem. ​A "no" would be a mercy. A "fuck you" would be a fire I could use to stay warm. But she was kind. She was mature. She gave the exact right response for a woman who is whole, and in doing so, she left the door cracked just enough for the cold to get in, but not enough for me to pass through. I am standing in the hallway of my own life, staring at a sliver of light that I’m not allowed to touch.

​It’s the "maybe" that kills you. It’s the "not right now" that keeps the hiker in the clearing, looking at the sky long after the helicopter has vanished into the clouds.

​I want to scream, but the room is too small for the sound. I want to be back on the mountain. I want to be laying in the actual, physical snow, where the frost bites at my skin and the air is so thin it hurts to breathe. I want to be where the external world finally matches the internal one. I want to lay there and let the ice numb the part of my chest that still feels her head resting there.

​My life has been a series of heavy lifts and moral high grounds, and I’m tired of being "nice." I’m tired of being the man who understands. I want to be the man who feels. I want to think about everything that has happened to me—the pill counts, the psychosis I’ve managed, the rebuilds I’ve been forced to lead—and I want to compare it to the three hours where I felt nothing at all.

​I am twenty-two, and I am grieving a possibility.

​The room is watching me again. It sees me looking at the door she left ajar. It sees the tension in my hands as I try not to reach for a handle that isn't mine to turn. There is no weightlessness tonight. There is only the rock-solid bed, the heavy silence, and the image of the mountain in my mind—the only place big enough to hold the weight of a man who was almost rescued, but was told to wait in the snow instead.

​I’m laying here, and the silence is telling me the truth: the door is cracked, but the room is still empty. And the snow is starting to fall.