What I Understood Late—Behind the Red Door
What is behind the closed “red” door?
There’s something I understood about myself from what she went through in college—like reading the pages of a life she was living but was no longer happy in.
She chose a different path. If I could go back, I’d tell her not to go to college at all. But it was too late. She had to find out the hard way.
Some unanswered questions turn into apologies.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner what the future held. I know you were only nineteen.
I would have told you to start the blog sooner—to write down the ideas, the creative things you used to do. I know you had to wait and come back and start again. I know you’re still learning lessons, still battling your thoughts, your dreams, and the decisions you made. But that’s the past.
All that matters is what you decide now.
What do you want, right now?
We’ve both closed so many doors and never opened them—except one.
What should stay closed is the past. The version of us that got hurt and gave every opportunity and still got hurt. She isn’t hurt anymore. She may have questions. She may want the full story. Maybe she shouldn’t know. Maybe it isn’t.
One question stays with her: what happened that Friday the 13th of March, 2020, after she left those two boys? What did they say once she was gone? What piece is she still missing?
No one wants to talk about it. Everyone wants to forget. But somewhere in her mind, she’ll find the answer herself. That’s a door that has to stay closed—for now. If she ever finds the key, maybe she’ll open it and see what’s been hiding there.
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There’s always one door no one wants opened. But I don’t want to open just one. I want all of them—every decision, every nook and cranny, every box, even the locked ones. I want to understand the person behind the files, behind every photograph—because right now I’m only looking at a photo on my phone, and I don’t know how to reach the person in it. I’ve been looking in the mirror too long. It’s time to ask the questions and get the answers.
I need the door to open—not to hear “not home,” not a change of address. I need to know, once and for all, what’s behind the red door and why it’s stayed locked.
“I don’t have the key” isn’t a good enough answer.
What about me? What about my side of the story? Why do they always get the last word, while every ultimatum I give gets a “sorry, I have to go?”
If the door was always meant to stay closed, why do I want so badly to open it?
I pass the red door—all its warnings—and jump straight to the yellow, where I’m told it’s a no-go zone. Then to the green, where they hold all the keys, except there’s no green in sight — only a white flag, held up in front of a door still wrapped in caution tape.
The red door stays locked, like it’s holding evidence. The yellow holds the caution that came after — after the secrets got blown out of proportion, after diaries became pages and a mirror became glass on the floor. No casket. Nobody. No crime.
Just a fingerprint at a keypad, a door that opened onto no one there. Dark. No light. As if whoever it was left the scene with nothing but pages of old diaries. We walked into a show that hadn’t started yet, with no evidence it ever would.
That’s what’s behind the doors that never opened. But if one door remains the question, it’s the red one. How did it end? What happened behind the yellow door, and what will come of the green?
The red door holds the key to everything. I hope it isn’t too late to understand what happened. But I’ll find out what it is, and what’s behind the door painted red.
This story is part of the writing challenge, “What I Understood Too Late,” on the ‘Clear & Kind’ publication, which is about understanding that it arrives too late to help in the moment but changes everything that follows. Deadline: 21 Aug.
Check out our new writing challenge, “Someone Else’s Shoes,” now live on the “Clear & Kind” publication, which is about the moment you stopped judging someone from the outside and, even briefly, saw the world from where they were standing. Deadline: 25 Aug.
