novel 5

THE DOOR I NEVER OPENED

Author : Kim Sparkle

Genre : Psychological Barrier , Slice of Life

I sit now in the deepening shadows of my study, the silent witness to a life lived in a golden cage. My hands are thin, my hair as white as the Himalayan peaks outside, and my bank accounts are overflowing with money. I have the big house, the ten cars, and the respect of a world that thinks I am a pillar of strength. But as the fire in the hearth flickers, I find myself staring at the wall, at the invisible, heavy door I spent eighty years standing before, yet never dared to open.

The door of love.

My childhood was a landscape of broken glass. Until I was five, I believed in flying unicorns and the safety of my father’s arms. But then the air in our home changed after the untimely death of my grandpa. I watched my grandmother, a women with a heart made of jealousy and bitterness, slowly dismantle my parent’s marriage. I saw my father, once a hero, buckle under the stress of his job and the constant poison of domestic war. He became a monster fueled by alcohol, the very thing he once vowed to never become.

The physical bubble of my childhood didn’t just pop, it was shredded. I watched his hands, the very once ones which had once been my sheild from every storm, move with striking cruelty toward my mother’s throat. I watched her break his bottles of alcohol with eyes which held overwhelming pain and weeping rage, the same eyes which once held our built home of love and happiness.

They were so busy destroying one another that they forgot a five-year-old was watching, learning that “love” was just a word for slow-motion murder. I forced myself to be a miniature adult. I learned that to survive, I had to be silent. I buried my anger and my tantrums, trading my voice for a momentary, fragile peace.

Then came my sister. My little angel to whom I had vowed unconditional love and unyeilding protection way before she came out of our mother’s womb. But my promise had crumbled under the vicious manipulation of my own grandmother. The nights of my mother’s stay in hospital she had whispered into my ears like a snake, filling it with filth. “Your mother won’t see you now. You are replaced.” “Your father won’t protect you now. You are abondoned.” At first I had refused to be manipulated. But then I watched. I watched as my mother played with her refusing me attention. My father pampering her with gifts while I got the cold shoulder.

I watched my parents shower her with affection, the same love I had starved for. I had been too immature to understand I had fallen into the trap of my grandmother's manipulation yet I didn’t give her the satisfaction of hatred she wanted to create. My moral values protected me from turning into the same jealous snake she was. So instead of turning vicious, I simply withered. I became a ghost in my own home, perfecting a mask of happiness so convincing it could make the heavens weep. My eyes remained dry even when my heart was bleeding tears.

When I was mature enough to understand the twisted plots of manipulation, my mother’s pain, my father’s silent cowardice, and my own helpless situation I had become too tired to hope for a new home of love. So I didn’t try to heal myself. I just trained myself to become strong to protect the broken pieces of my heart. Because my eyes had already become too dry even when my heart was bleeding tears.

Years later, in college, a boy tried to find me behind the mask. He was a computer genius with a soul made of kindness. During a game of Truth and Dare, I finally admitted I had a silent crush on the genius of Computer department. When he smiled back, the world felt charged with a terrifying heat. Like everything that didn't make sense suddenly started to have a meaning.

For a moment I had stood with my hand on the doorknob. Just a step forward, just a twist of the handle could have opened the door. But the trauma was the lock. Every time he laughed with a female friend, my mind played back my father’s betrayals on loop. Every time he ignored my calls because of an exam my insecurities whispered about the cold abondence of my mother. My past didn't just haunt me, it stood in front of that door like a gargoyle. I realised that my heart wasn't just broken. It was scattered into too many pieces to ever be put back together for someone else.

So, I chose to run. I chose the cold, safe luxury of loneliness over the bittersweet pain of love. Because even if the films had shown me the pleasure of love, my life had shown me the pain it costs. I built an empire to hide my emptiness. I have everything the world says matters, but I am still that five-year-old girl, standing in a dark hallway, too terrified to turn the handle and open my heart. Love was the only door I never opened, and now, I’m out of time.

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