Throughout my life I was upset because I felt I had no identity I could give myself to. Then I came around to the idea that identities are’t really that important (if they even exist,) so I wrote this short story, “Answers and Questions and Doors: A Text on Questions, Identity and Answers for the Grand Association of Door Openers” published on The Honest Ulsterman
It would be an achievement, of sorts, if I could tell you how many doors I’ve opened in my life. A rough estimate is possibly something I could manage. I’ve worked this job, opening doors, for seventeen years.
Coming out of school, or at least leaving school, not finishing school, is always taking a chance. You don’t know where life will take you other than the fact you’re going somewhere. Friends had babies. Left school. Friends had boyfriends. Left school. Left the boyfriend. All that in some kind of order anyway. Friends had difficulties with the aul wans. School aul wans. Home aul wans. Actually auld aul wans, thinking back. Left school. Left home. Became aul wans, eventually. Usually in that order. I left school because it didn’t have any more answers for me.
I guess, in a way, I was lucky to leave school in the manner I did. There was nothing pushing me out. I was pulling me out. I dragged my life behind me, a right good tug, and it vaulted before me. There I was, with everything laid out, a career somehow ahead of me. Pure luck. It’s entirely this manner of addressing life that wound me up in this job where I open doors.
For a decade houses have been built and I somehow managed to end up opening doors during the decade houses weren’t being built. Or apartments. Or factories (although they tend to have less doors.) Nothing was being built. No train stations, bus stations, lightrail stations. Even offices, now open plan, then less so, with some doors to be opened weren’t being built. And I lucked into a business where doors weren’t being opened. The people who built doors needed someone to do exactly that, open them up. Health and safety. Or box ticking. Something along those lines. I couldn’t tell you how many doors I’ve opened in my life, so maybe that will be my last question: how many important doors have I opened?
It frightened me when this future would have come. Slowly rising, welcoming, announcing itself with emptiness. Is this what I chased? I didn’t ask. That’s what I was afraid of; that coming present; me chasing questions across fields, across cities, and yes, through doors. The present, now, passed, or then to be, where all there was was a, “What’s next?” or a, “What’s this?” There were deeper questions. Some questions are deep, some are shallow, some barely count. But this future would have come, asking one last question. And then this last question would have been happily answered. There would be no more questions. What would having everything answered mean?