Some Truths Are More Dangerous Than Lies

I learned early that some memories don’t knock. They don’t ask permission. They don’t wait until you are ready. They just show up, uninvited, loud in their silence, standing in the doorway of your mind like they never left. I hadn’t thought about that house in years. Or maybe I had, and I’d just gotten very good at pretending I hadn’t. Either way, it came back to me on a Tuesday evening while I was washing a mug I didn’t remember using, in a kitchen that didn’t feel like mine. The water was too hot. I noticed that after my skin started to sting. I turned the tap down, watched the steam fade, and stared at my hands like they belonged to someone else. They looked steady. Normal. Capable. Hands that suggested a life that functioned. That was the lie I lived inside. I dried them slowly, deliberately, as if taking my time might delay the thought crawling its way up my spine. It didn’t work. It never did. Because suddenly, I could see the door. Not the one in front of me, the plain white one leading out of my apartment, but that one. Dark wood. Old hinges. A handle that always felt colder than it should have. The door at the end of the hallway in the house I grew up in. The door everyone pretended not to notice. I dropped the towel. It hit the floor with a soft, unimpressive sound. The kind of sound you expect to come from ordinary things. The kind that doesn’t warn you that your chest is about to cave in on itself. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes. Don’t, I told myself. Not tonight. But memory doesn’t listen to reason. It listens to weakness. And I was tired, bone tired, the kind of tired that makes old wounds curious again. The hallway was narrow. That’s the first thing I always remember. Even in my mind, it feels too tight, the walls too close, the air thick with the smell of old paint and something sour I never quite learned to name. The carpet was beige once, I think. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself now. By the time I was old enough to notice, it was stained in places no one explained. My bedroom was the second door on the left. I knew the pattern of cracks above it by heart. I used to count them when I couldn’t sleep. Seven thin ones, branching like veins. At the end of the hall was the door. Always closed. Always silent. Always there. No one told me not to open it. That was the worst part. Children are warned about sharp edges, hot stoves, strangers. But no one ever sat me down and said, Whatever you do, don’t go in there. It was simply understood, the way families understand things they refuse to say out loud. Some truths live in the unsaid. I don’t remember the first time I noticed it. I just remember always knowing it existed. Like a secret that predated me. Sometimes I think that’s where everything went wrong, not when something happened, but when everyone decided it was easier to live around it than to confront it. I was thirteen when I opened it. Or maybe I was younger. Time blurs when your brain decides survival matters more than accuracy. All I know is that I wasn’t a child anymore when I stepped inside, and I wasn’t quite myself after. The present snapped back into place violently, like a rubber band pulled too far. I opened my eyes. My kitchen light flickered once, then steadied. The hum of the refrigerator filled the silence. Somewhere outside, a car passed. Life, continuing, unapologetically indifferent to my internal collapse. I slid down until I was sitting on the cold tile floor. This happens sometimes. The slipping. One moment I’m here, and the next I’m somewhere else entirely, my body present but my mind digging through rubble it swore it buried. Doctors call it dissociation. I call it betrayal. Because it feels like my own brain turning against me. I pressed my palms to the floor and focused on the sensation, solid, real, now. I named things quietly under my breath. Tile. Counter. Chair. Mug. You are safe, I tried to believe. You are grown. You left. But safety is complicated when your memories don’t respect geography. The thing about leaving is that you take everything with you. I stood up slowly, like someone recovering from a fall no one else saw. My reflection caught my eye in the darkened microwave door, eyes too alert, mouth set in a line that suggested control rather than peace. People tell me I’m calm. They say it like it’s a compliment. They don’t know it’s just practice. I moved to the living room and sat on the edge of the couch, hands clasped so tightly my fingers ached. There was a notebook on the coffee table. I didn’t remember putting it there. That should have worried me more than it did. I opened it. The first page was blank. The second wasn’t. Some doors don’t stay closed, it read, in my handwriting. My stomach twisted. I stared at the words, trying to remember when I’d written them. The ink looked fresh. The pressure of the pen heavy, angry. This wasn’t casual. This was intentional. This was me, talking to myself again. I flipped the page. You promised you wouldn’t forget this time. A laugh escaped me, short, sharp, humorless. “I didn’t,” I said aloud, to the empty room. “I just didn’t remember remembering.” That was another thing no one prepared me for: how memory loss isn’t always blank space. Sometimes it’s layered. Memories buried under other memories, all pretending to be solid ground until you step wrong. I closed the notebook and set it down carefully, like it might bite. There are parts of my life that feel like they belong to someone else. Photos I don’t remember taking. Conversations I don’t recall having. People who swear they know me better than I know myself. They might be right. The past has a way of making liars out of us all. I went to the window and looked out at the city. Lights everywhere. Lives stacked on top of lives. Everyone carrying something, whether they admitted it or not. I wondered, not for the first time, how many of them were walking around with doors in their heads they refused to open. How many of them had already opened theirs and survived badly. My phone buzzed on the table behind me. I didn’t turn around right away. There was a part of me, a cowardly, honest part, that was afraid of what I might see. Afraid it would confirm what my body already knew. When I finally looked, it was a message from a number I hadn’t saved. You don’t remember me, it said. But you should. My throat went dry. I stared at the screen until the words blurred, then sharpened again. My heart wasn’t racing. That was the strange part. It felt… heavy. Like something settling into place. Somewhere deep inside me, a lock turned. I typed back before I could stop myself. Who is this? The reply came almost immediately. The door wasn’t the problem, it read. It was what you saw after you opened it. I dropped the phone. It landed face down on the rug, silent now, as if satisfied. I stood there, frozen, the room closing in around me, every nerve in my body screaming the same truth: I didn’t forget because I was weak. I forgot because remembering was dangerous. And whatever I had buried wasn’t done with me yet.