Let’s talk about doors.

You’ve spent most of your life behind doors.

In an office, classroom, a bedroom, always with the door closed. And there’s nothing wrong with that;

But there was one year I spent entirely behind a single dorm-room door. That was the year I discovered I was talentless.

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday.

Did you know that a person can survive only on ramen, mandarin oranges, baby carrots, and multi-vitamins?

Maybe ‘survive’ isn’t the right word. There was one day that I blacked out far before evening, and when I woke up I was in the hospital. But in the end I’m still here, living, breathing, with a beating heart. Here to talk to you about doors.

The average chess master gets their title at the age of 18.

I’ve never played a game of chess, and I don’t really care about it (what’s en passant?) but without having tried it I know that door is shut.

An ‘old’ olympic gymnast has 19 years, the same as me, who has never touched a set of parallel bars. Door closed.

Almost all artists, all cartoonists, have a history of tracing comics when they’re children. Thunk! Another door slammed shut before I’d even thought to go through it.

I will never speak another language fluently,

I will never know what it’s like to be a prodigy,

and I will never be truly good at music.

It’s true that there might be exceptions to these rules,

but for every one exception that you mention I can name 9,999,999 people these rules bind. And to say that I’m the one that’s special, isn’t that as delusional as saying I know I’ll win the lottery?

So knowing that I had already failed,

that I already can’t live any dream,

I froze as if by not acting I could freeze my time.

For that whole year I stayed in my dormitory and did anything that could chase thoughts from my mind. 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Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

or the games where, without really understanding if I’ve won or lost, I always can just hit ‘play again.’ That’s how I spent my year.

It was as if a creature had curled up around my heart, squeezing me whenever I tried to do something for my life. It hissed to me, told me, that this was the most I’d ever have to enjoy, scrolling and games.

But one person visited me. She knocked on the door (a real door) and I looked through the peephole and there she was, twin-tails trailing and a scowl on her face. She held a binder close to her chest.

“I have your homework,” she said. “Yuri? Are you there?”

There was a silence.

“I’ll leave it here,” she said, and when the hall was empty I took the binder and slid it under my bed.

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday.

She came with new sheets, new work, new papers.

“I talked to the teachers; you don’t need to do the work,” she said. “But at least look through the binder. When you feel like it, okay?”

When she had gone and I picked up the folder, the plastic in my hand felt like heavy slate. In one stilted motion, ignoring the dark-snake constricting me, I flipped it open and saw a dozen neat-lined sheets.

They were pages of handwritten notes, elaborate and cursive, and from the header I learned her name. Lily, the class representative. In hindsight, maybe she was the reason I was held back instead of expelled.

On Saturday I expected to spend the whole day all alone, since there was of course no school, no reason to see me. But on that day she set food outside the door, a box with rice, sausage, eggs, tomatoes; and after sixty days, where she came every day, I decided that taking that little black ball that had nested within me to school was better than curling up with it in my room.