Broken Door Ballad

It's just a broken door.

It's really not that bad.

I mean, it still opens and closes,

you just need five times the strength you used to if you want it to actually move.

But it's fine, it still works.

It even locks.

Granted, not with the ease it once did.

Sometimes it doesn't lock, I'll admit.

The heat swells the wood and, after being slammed so hard, the locking mechanisms on opposite pieces of the door don't quite match up.

But if you fiddle with it, you can get it to lock still, you just have to try a bit harder than before.

The door has been broken for years.

It's the new normal.

It's okay because I can live with it.

I'm not dying and it won't kill me.

But it's pretty inconvenient that the door has been this way for so long.

Even though it feels natural, like it has always been this way, I know that's not true.

I retain faint memories of going in and out of that sliding glass door in less than a second,

locking it swiftly with one finger on my way inside.

I would compulsively lock it after coming in every single time in order to soothe my fear and paranoia.

I guess it's good I don't do that anymore?

Probably a sign I feel safer these days?

I try to find the silver linings.

But the door is still broken.

Every time I open or shut it, it becomes painfully obvious it is still very broken.

I'm not sure when the idea of fixing it went out the window.

There had been plans to buy new parts and restore it to its former glory.

But, you see, it's a basement door.

I'm really the only one that uses it, the only one who notices.

I spent quite a long time being mad that the door was broken.

That didn't fix the door.

As the anger faded, the normalization of broken doors reframed itself in my mind.

"That's just the way it is."

And since I don't automatically know how to fix it, I don't.

I don't look up instructions on how to mend the hardware because I'm not the one who broke it.

It doesn't feel like my responsibility.

I blame someone else and pretend it doesn't bother me.

But it's my home and my door and I'm the one who uses it.

And it does bother me.

A lot.

How long will I tell myself I'm fine walking through broken doors?

What will it take for me to repair the damage?

I want to be the kind of person who goes to the hardware store right after the door breaks.

But instead I'm the person who kept using that same, annoying broken door for three years before realizing that I'm the one who chose to live this way.

I didn't break it.

But I can fix it.