The Door

I have a squeaky door.

Actually, squeaky doesn’t seem like a strong enough adjective for the thing, which seems to sigh its way into a scream whenever anyone has the audacity to so much as brush past it. On a particularly squeaky day (when the humidity is just right), it will groan at your mere thought of entering the spare room beyond.

When I say ‘spare room’, it’s relevant for you to know that this is an office-cum-bedroom and I do, in fact, need to use the ‘office’ aspect at least once per day. ‘Door’ has been protesting this fact in ever-increasing volume over the past six years.

Occasionally I have insomnia and, rather than subject my husband to hours of ‘musical pillows’ and angry thrashing while I try to find the Goldilocks of sleeping positions, I will take myself to the spare room so that I can read/do yoga/ generally while away the night without being a disturbance. I ninja-roll out of bed, carefully tiptoe out across the hallway and then pause in front of Door, realising that all attempts to be stealth-like are about to be thwarted.

Door will not go quietly into the night.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I’ve tried it all- all the contortions and sucking in of body parts in an attempt to slip through the gap of Door ajar; I have used the ‘ripping off the plaster’ technique, trying to trick Door out of its protestations by speedily flinging it open, to no avail. I suspect that my attempts served only to anger Door, and this (rather than age, rust, wear and tear, or, you know, science) is the reason behind the worsening racket.

However, a few weeks ago, something different happened.

I brushed past Door on my way downstairs, causing the usual cacophony, but this time I stopped in my tracks. I took the handle and slowly moved Door back and forth, tuning in my hearing to pinpoint the exact location of the squeak. And then, inexplicably after all these years, I went downstairs and located the WD40. In a process that took a maximum of two minutes of my life and involved the use of precisely two squirts of grease, the burden of Door’s noisy interference in my days came to a sudden, blissful end.

Why am I telling you any of this, you would be well within your rights to ask?

Because as I lay there that night, having silently set myself up in the spare room, without any anxiety of waking anyone else, and feeling the self-satisfaction of finally having taken control of a niggle that had gone on for far too long, it occurred to me that Door might just be a metaphor for something that we do to ourselves every day, often without realising it.

Burdens and contortions

Many of us carry the burden of something/s that we tell ourselves cannot be shared. We navigate through life containing secrets, confusions, experiences, thoughts that we tell ourselves are un-shareable, feelings that we believe are unbearable; we contort to avoid ever having these seen or heard- we expend valuable, precious energy to keep things hidden.

To keep them quiet.

In the case of a person feeling neglected and unloved by their earliest caregivers, for example, the contortions to avoid feeling the pain of the burden of feeling unlovable can include:

•  workaholism,

• people-pleasing and co-dependency

• substance abuse

• anxiety

• depression

• imposter syndrome

• self-harm

• rage

• eating disorders

• and the list goes on

  
  

The list is vast and likely causing the sufferer MORE pain than the original burden. Yet for years we can sidestep ever taking that moment of pause; of curiosity and of tuning right in over the ‘squeaky’ spot, denying ourselves the possibility of emotional WD40.

 As humans we can often hand over our power to release our burdens and instead navigate through life attempting to avoid the world hearing our ‘squeaks’, while inside we can barely contain the screaming. The lengths that we can go to try and get through our metaphorical doors without making a sound can convince us over time that the problem is unsolvable- we assume this is just how life must be.

we deny ourselves the possibility of emotional WD40

Therapy can and should offer a safe relationship, free from judgement, where clients can gradually experience the invitation to speak the thought, the feeling, the memory, the behaviour, the addiction- and in so doing, they can experience an unburdening.

What a relief!

Perhaps you might take a moment to pause at the end of this essay and be curious about the squeaky door you have been containing. Imagine what it could be like not to make yourself small; not to contort or attempt to outwit, but instead to use your power to release the burden. Be curious about how you might use your energy when it isn’t performing mental gymnastics to get around an issue. It might take many attempts to locate the source of the squeak – it could need multiple cans of WD40 – but I know that when you finally decide you’ve had enough of the noise, you can take back your power and have peace.