My sister had a door to Love. She used to let people peek through, to see the people they would become if they gave up their hearts. She stopped. I am not sure why perhaps it hurt her to know love was not all rainbows and butterflies. She keeps her door in a drawer now, tucked between the pages of a book.
My brother had a door to Regret. He never told anyone about it, we all have doors in this household. His door was small, made of metal, and locked around his neck by a chain. It was more a locket, so heavy it left a bruise around his shoulders.
My door is kept in the palm of my hands, though the key is always different. Sometimes people hand me photographs or old buttons. It just has to make you think, feel, remember.
The door is made of different things, for different people. If you have never seen a door cast, it is often confusing and horrific. My mother casts a door made of failures and it takes the color from her hair. She does not cast it these days, but sometimes she used to sit before it and turn ghost-white at the roots. It would take days for the color to return.
She is more vibrant these days.
But casting doors is always at a cost. Mine is paid for by others. While failures and love come from other people, a childhood is personal, a small pebble you kept in a drawer or the faint scent of a favorite treat. The cost is the item and the association-it is a heavy cost, but people pay it. They want to know. They want to see.
Children are *innocent.* I have heard that a thousand times. No, children are ignorant. Showing them the world takes the quality away. That is what my door does, it shows you all the things you overlooked. It answers questions. And I have had some pretty heavy questions asked of me.
But if you gaze too long into the door... and I have had people walk through and never return... the child you once were is gone and... people aren't the same without a childhood. Something breaks.