Memoirs of an Amnesiac

I have been looking at doors for the longest time I've ever remembered. They're those part of houses I greatly admire. I have one friend who likes windows. She especially likes French windows. She said she feels like a princess when she fancifully lunges into opening them, like probably Juliet, waiting for her Romeo while she's busily cleaning the blinds.

Yet nothing could ever dissuade me from liking doors. Not that I'm not a big fan of Romeo and Juliet or Rapunzel (who looked at her window with her beaming eyes, ready to discover those downtrodden paths her eyes could sweep but can't because she's trapped in that tower her evil foster mother had enclosed her with). I look at doors with much enthusiasm as the toddler who first learned how to swipe through an iPad. They're more than just portals of passage, of a phase that everyone will eventually have to go through, no matter how much they try to evade it. It amazes me how doors signal the beginning and ending of moments, of the passage of time, as elusive as the first drops of dew at dawn.

It's amazing still how getting in and out of it could spell the difference between describing how life works and actually experiencing it. Sometimes it could be a warm welcome. At other times, a sad goodbye.

I get in and out of doors everyday in the school where I work. There we have two doors (to probably suggest that students have the freedom to actually get out, even without permission, anytime they need to should they find lessons already bordering on boredom). In this case, doors signify freedom--every person's need to walk out--of a bad situation, a seemingly hopeless situation, a phase that they need to outgrow, a life that needs revamping.

Too often the doors in my life have been passed by people whom I considered (and still consider) important. I've seen them walk in and out, as if they're just passing through those annoying metal detectors in malls. Some of them choose to stay for a while. But most of the time, I see them walk out and enjoying the freedom that doors could afford them.

I can't say that it can be painful being left behind by those who choose to walk out of my doors. It's just that it had been soul enriching every time I meet people who walk in through my doors.

That and this feeling of awe at those amazing doors...