If it helps, think of it as a dream.
You’re standing on a doorstep, with your left hand holding the edge of an open door—something is coming. The sense of it slithers up your spine like a hundred lizards. Your breath catches in your throat; it could be bad. It could hurt you. It could question you. It could make you feel less-than. Are you going to close the door?
But those lizards aren’t meteorologists. Whatever’s shifting on the wind, it might be a warm front. It could heal you. It could see you, just as you are. Just as you’ve never seen yourself. Are you going to close the door? Your fingers curl.
Wake up. Your right hand clutches your blankets like it did when you were small. Nothing’s left in your left but the cheap wood of your language. Oh not again you say as you wipe the fever dream from your forehead. Your language serves you, yes. Like a door with a deadbolt, it’s helped you lock out creeps and the bad-kind-of-weirdos.
But how many times have you shut out a curiosity or an invitation to come close? How many times have you booted out tenderness with a slam of biting humor? How many times have you disguised your insecurity as mockery, and closed off someone who’d otherwise be your friend?
Be delicate with your words. They can open up the warmth of a home with all its fresh bread and laughter. But thoughtless words reject, like thrown rocks turning away a soft traveler to dissolve back into the rain. A diminishing correction, a harsh cackle, an armor of deflective jokes. You’ve used them all.
There’s beauty in the bad side: use your language to draw lines when you need them. Keep out petulant visitors who don’t wipe their feet. Open the door for the good, and close and triple-lock it from those who wish to do you harm.
Everything hinges upon the words you say, and how you say them. Stay open.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, text a friend to ask them how you can listen to them today, and consider why your apartment has a doorbell button, but no bell?