Worry Room With Door

Imagine a room. And in the room, there is a door.

This is where your worries live. All of them. The ones that come in the night. The ones that attach themselves to small ordinary things and make those things suddenly enormous. The ones that have been here for years. The newer ones, fresh and sharp. All of them are here, in this room, which has been where they live because you had not built them a room before, and so they lived everywhere.

Go in. Look around. It is fine to enter. The worries know you. You know them. This visit is on your terms, not theirs.

What is in here? Take inventory, calmly, the way you would take inventory of a room you are deciding what to do with. A worry about money or safety or health. A worry about someone you love. A worry about the future, which is unknowable and therefore available to be worried about infinitely. A worry about who you are or whether you have done enough or whether you will be enough.

Each one is real. Do not dismiss them. Dismissing a worry does not remove it, it just makes it go underground and come back through the floor. Acknowledge each one: I see you. You are here because something in me takes it seriously. That is noted.

Now here is the most important part. The door. The door has a handle. And the handle can be turned. And when you turn it and step through and close the door behind you, the worries stay in the room.

Step through. Close the door. Not with violence. Not trying to seal it permanently. Just: close it. You are on one side, they are on the other. You can go back in when you choose. You can open the door for a deliberate visit when it is useful to think through what needs to be thought through. But the key word is choose.

On this side of the door, you are in a different quality of space. The worries are still there. Right behind the door. But they are contained. They are in their room. And you are in yours.

Breathe. The space on this side of the door has room for breath. Has room for the present moment, which the worries were crowding out. What is actually here? What is real and present and immediate? The ground under your feet. The air moving through you. The sounds of right now. The body, in this moment, which is more often okay than the worries allow you to believe.

The room is there. It will always be there. The door does not make the worries disappear. It makes them containable. The difference is enormous.

Tonight, they are in the room. The door is closed. You are on this side.

Breathe. You made the room. You built the door. You turned the handle. That was your agency. yours.

You can do this. You just did.

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