Open doors

“You’re overthinking again.”

“Not really. It’s huge decision.”

“Not really. It’s just a package.”

“It’s more than that, can’t you see? That’s why they disguised the label.”

I studied the label. The blue smiling logo indicated the package most likely contained my latest book order.

“Nope.”

“Of course not. You never see. I know you think I’m crazy.”

I drew back. My eyes searching for something to gaze at besides his, fell on the welcome sign friends had given us when we moved in. Right before our happy life was juxtaposed with this unmagical experience. What was I supposed to think, that we were living in a comic book? No, this was a tale too dark and grim for their many-hued leaves.

“I’m telling you, it’s a door. After what happened when I opened the last door, how am I really supposed to feel about this?”

“How am I supposed to feel when the person I love is talking nonsense? Not only talking…”

My finger traced the scar on his arm from a recent excursion through one of his ‘doors.’ He claimed some long-nailed, grim-faced monster had clawed him just as he escaped back to our house through the kitchen garbage can. He was on the kitchen floor when I found him, covered in goop that smelled like sour milk and regret, his arm bleeding.

Trash spilled onto the kitchen floor, which I cleaned while wondering whether to stay with him. Don’t judge me, it wasn’t easy in those early days. He refused to seek medical help for any of it – the wound or the mind that believed the kitchen garbage was a door to another world.

There were other 'doors' in our home and garden. He had climbed a mountain in the shower once -- met an uncontacted tribe from the Amazon River basin inside the refrigerator. When I asked if there were also faeries in the flowerbed, he balked, “Faeries are only in stories. They aren’t real.”

He really scared me though, a couple of days ago. I was torn awake by screams that threatened to shred the very walls that surrounded us with the illusion of security. He clawed his way out from under the bed, desperate, sweaty, and covered in agonizing welts.

He had been swarmed by a hive of killer bees in the jungle under our bed.

I insisted we go to the hospital. The bewildered doctor said he had over three hundred stings. I tried to process that it was winter in Montana. There are absolutely no hives of killer bees here, nor a jungle -- especially not under our bed.

For all my tossing and turning over the ensuing long nights, I couldn’t reconcile what had happened. I obsessively shined my flashlight beneath the bed, only to meet the usual dust bunnies and discarded sneakers.

What I’d seen didn’t match what my mind and science and everything except fairy tales told me was true. Was I living in The Wizard of Oz – or with him?

They said it was rare. That occasionally people with hallucinogenic conditions experience psychosomatic symptoms. Psychosomatic bee stings were an affront to my reality, which I had heretofore assumed was sound.

Now I reached for one of the still-healing blisters. If nothing else was sure about the situation, I was sure I needed to walk this out – this yellow brick road of sorts that wasn’t half as cheery as I wished it were.

He shrank from my touch, eyes like a puppy that has just been scolded. “I know you think I’m crazy, so I’m going to open the box and prove to you that I’m not.”

He reached for the seal, then shrank once more, a shudder traveling through his being like a faint lightning bolt. “No, I can’t. You could be hurt.”

“I haven’t been hurt by these things, whatever they are. I don’t think the doors have any interest in opening to me.”

“They do, but I don’t let them. They always want you to come too.”

I pondered for a moment that this could be the cure. He wants connection, a shared adventure. Validation is powerful poison – or is it medicine? “Maybe that’s what we should do then. Maybe we should go to your other world together. Maybe then the doors will stop opening and you won’t keep meeting monsters.”

“Or maybe the monsters will swallow both of us whole.”

“I’ve never been afraid of monsters. I’m only afraid of losing my connection to you.”

He paused, reading my face, sizing up my earnestness for honesty or romanticism. Wishful thinking or love?

He heaved a burdened sigh. It seemed to be heavier just to lift his chest and breathe than it was to lift a house from its foundation.

“Fine, we’ll open it together. Let me get the scissors.”

He padded barefoot to the kitchen and returned with the shears, gingerly, as if whatever was inside might explode if he rattled it, he cut the tape open. Hands on the flaps of the box, he turned to me. “Are you sure you want to know? Once you do there’s no going back.”

“I know. I’m sure.”

I placed my hands over his and together we opened the box and peered into a forest. A faint roar echoed from some distant, unseen waterfall. No book was in sight.

“I told you! I should just throw the box out. We don’t have to go.”

“Don’t throw it out! Why would you do that when you’ve walked there so many times? Just because everything isn’t good, doesn’t mean nothing is.”

“What if nothing is? Will you stay with me?”

“Is that true? Is nothing good behind your doors?”

“It’s not true.”

“Are you ready to leap then?”

Hand in hand, we stepped into the unknown – monsters notwithstanding.

Isn’t that all love ever is?