The Closet

On cold September days when the world has forgotten me again, I grab a blanket, a cup of coffee, a book, and curl up on the floor of my closet. It’s a small space, the closet. There’s only room for one. There’s only room for me.

I like it, in there, where it’s dark and cold and quiet. Where I’m alone. I’m safe. No one can touch me, or talk to me. No one can hurt me. I’m in the closet alone. The closet knows all my secrets. The closet has kept them quiet, locked behind the closed door that never truly locks anymore. The lock broke, or maybe there just was never a lock; if there was, I was too young to remember, or not even young enough to even know there was a door or a closet. There’s no lock. But it keeps all the secrets just the same as if there was one. Even though it would be easier to let them all pour out than it would be if there was a lock.

The closet knows everything. The closet has been there when I’ve cried, when I’ve failed a test, when I lost a friend, when I felt alone, when I was scared, when I was hiding from my mother behind the dresses I never liked to wear, huddled in the back by the pretty heels I’d always hated, disguised so well in the comfort of the darkness that no one could find me. The closet has been there when I liked someone, when I drove myself crazy with those teenage infatuations, with the middle school hopes and dramatized heartbreaks. When I had my first boyfriend. When I broke up with my first boyfriend. When I broke up with my second boyfriend, and my third, and my fourth.

The closet keeps things hidden from everyone, sometimes even me.

The closet knows everything about me. Things no one else does.

The closet is the place I never want to leave. My sanctuary.

I’ll come out eventually. I always do. When it gets late or too cold or my flashlight dies, I come out. But I always go back to hiding. I always go back into the closet. The closet where it’s dark, and cold, and quiet, and small, and safe. The closet where I do my homework, where I study. Where I do everything alone. I like doing everything alone. It’s easier that way. Less complicated.

I haven’t come out of the closet I built in my head. The one that keeps a girl trapped. A girl I am to everyone else. The girl that gawks at hot guys and giggles at cute books and movies with straight relationships and listens to music about girls falling in love with guys. The closet I built in my head isn’t my closet. It’s not where I feel safe and calm and alone. It’s how I keep from being laughed at and judged and isolated. It’s how I stay safe and calm by being alone. It’s not where I am safe.

Sometimes I listen to music in the closet, sometimes I listen to it out loud, sometimes I put in earbuds and turn the volume up until it blocks out the silence, until I’m alone again. I like being alone. Alone with my thoughts and my secrets. Alone with only me. Alone in a place where I can leave the closet in my head. Where I can be the girl who gawks at hot girls instead of hot guys and giggles at cute books and movies with crooked relationships and listens to music about girls falling in love with girls.

And then when I leave the closet, I go back into my closet. I don’t have to stay in my closet. But I do. I stay in my head. I stay safe.

I remember the first time I fell in love with a girl. The closet kept me safe while I learned to let it go. But after that I couldn’t go back into the closet in my head. It wouldn’t let me back in. The fake girl in the cage died, she faded away until I had nothing to hide behind.

The closet was still there, though. The closet in the corner of my room. The closet where it’s dark, and cold, and quiet, and small, and safe.

It’s been five years since I was that girl.

I miss her, sometimes.

We pull into the driveway, and my grip tightens on the wheel like it always does when I go home. It’s been a year since I was last here. My parents aren’t home yet.

She puts her hand on mine. “It’s okay,” she says.

I nod.

We get out of the car and I dig through the coats hanging in the patio and pull out the house key. The house is quiet. My sister won’t get home until tomorrow.

“I love your house.”

I smile, “I know you do.”

She puts her stuff down and we go upstairs and walk down the hall to my room.

She’s the first person I ever showed the closet to. It’s my sacred place.

We close the closet door behind us and sit down. She slips her hand into mine, giving it a squeeze. I look up at her, and she smiles, eyes cutting through the darkness. It’s emptier, now, the dresses gone after so many years of ill wear, the pretty shoes packed away in boxes in some other lonely, forgotten place. But it’s the same closet its always been. It’s dark, and cold, and quiet, and small, and safe. But it’s bigger now. Now there’s not only room for me.

There’s room for her.

There’s room for both of us.