What they don’t tell you about the closet is that it never truly leaves you. Each new acquaintance shoves you back behind that door and makes you wonder: am I safe?

The accounting happens on instinct, collecting receipts, tracking words and microexpressions, counting costs and deposits until the ledger paints a clear picture. Even when the sum total is screaming at you SAFE. THEY’RE SAFE, it’s still a risk. Once you open that door, you can't close it again.

Sometimes, you’re in southern Indiana or central Kentucky (which also both have mountains; did you know?), and you’re standing behind three doors that are separating you from people you love more than you ever thought possible, and you can’t shake the fear that you’re about to lose them forever. What if they reject you? What if they don’t reject you, but they don’t support you, either? What if this causes a seismic shift, and even though you keep loving them for the rest of your life, they hold you at a distance because this isn’t the version of you they signed up for? What if you make yourself unlovable in their eyes?

What will they say?

What if they don’t say anything at all?

You don’t have the answers; there’s only one way to get them, so you open the door and hold your breath and try to play it cool while you wait for a reaction.

In Indiana, you shake and sob and sigh with relief. 

In Kentucky, you wait. And you wait. When nothing happens, you make a note in the ledger and keep watch. You keep on adding, subtracting, looking for patterns, and hoping you didn’t fuck it up while you wait for the books to tell you: SAFE or NOT SAFE.