Behind Closed Doors

Something doesn’t feel quite right these days. I’m in-between, hanging in the wind, waiting for the next set of closed doors to open, for what lies behind those doors to emerge. The earth moved from winter through solstice into spring, yet temperatures still dip. Which jacket and shoes to wear? How many blankets are needed at night? We just sprang the clock ahead, but I haven’t yet adjusted and my sleep is off. A big birthday lies ahead and I want to get into celebratory mode, but I still dwell in this decade, which was capped off by a trying and tumultuous year. Least exciting of all, I’m in that liminal phase dubbed perimenopause by Western medicine.

“Façade,” a song in “Jekyll and Hyde,” one of my favorite musicals, describes how so many of us, myself included, live our lives. “There’s a face that we wear/In the cold light of day–/It’s society’s mask,/It’s society’s way,/And the truth is/That it’s all a façade!” Behind my façade—the one that shows a smiling person answering “fine” to the socially-accepted question, “How are you?”, lives a person who believes that every online photo-shopped image is real and that only I endure a life of darkness and despair behind closed doors.