Let’s Talk! – Closing a Door

Are you ready to switch off your screens and ponder or discuss another writing/conversation prompt from my friend Tyrean Martinson’s book? Here’s my take on it.

We are standing on the threshold of another new year. Looking back at 2024, it was a turbulent year in so many ways out there in the world. Maybe even inside our microcosms.

I find that the bad in mine has been outweighed by the meaningfulness of the good, even though what irked me seemed to dominate some stretches of 2024. But was it as important and as shaping as the good stuff? Was what was less pleasant self-created or did it simply happen? So, what part will it have in my 2025? Will I let anything bad from 2024 in knowingly, or will I close the door in its face?

Closing doors is something that is not necessarily a forever thing unless the door has a latch on one side. I have closed doors a lot in my past. Whenever it was necessary to walk forward without being dragged back. I remember being mobbed in school for being the nerdy girl I was; I embraced the way I was and simply closed these other girls out who thought they had to tell me how I should be to be more popular. I buried myself in books and learned about other nations, cultures, and religions far away. Basically, I stepped outside their box and embraced the big, wide world that was outside theirs.

I closed doors on dreams, too. On getting a PhD because in one subject I would have ended up in an ivory tower, the only people to understand me being of my own field of science; in the other because I was dealing with misogynists, and I felt too proud to have them talk down to me. On professions for which I didn’t have the elbow or the willingness to fight. On projects because they would have eaten up my energy without being useful for anybody.

And at some points I had to close doors on people who didn’t realize that they overstepped again and again. Who neither accepted who I was nor heard my protest. Who added insult to injury. Because they were who they were and didn’t even know what they were doing.

Closing doors is self-protection. But does it work with entering a new year?

Of course, midnight on New Year’s Eve is only a symbolical threshold. Life goes on, and we can and sometimes must make changes not based on a date but on a necessity. Also, there will be things from one year that we take into the next. Ideas, projects, people, memories, the good that happened as well as the experiences from the bad.

Midnight is not a door we can close. Only 2024 will be finished. If that is good enough a door for you, so be it. Let’s close it, and let’s be prepared to enter 2025. A smile or a kiss at midnight aren’t a bad opener, are they? Or simply some tight sleep. Happy New Year!