When I was a little girl, my favorite piece of jewelry was my heart locket. I thought it was so mysterious that you could keep a tiny picture inside, locked up, only for you to know about unless you wanted to share what was inside with someone else.
Here I am... 20-something and my heart locket is still my favorite, only it's not a piece of jewelry now. It's emotional hardware. Locked, sealed, hanging around my neck, resting on my chest.
Every time I open the locket my life does a tailspin that leaves me dizzy and sick to my stomach with the ever-repeating never-answered question ringing in my head "why did I open my locket?"
It's like the locket... there's 2 sides. Two convenient, or not so convenient compartments. On one hand I hate when my locket is closed. It's a lonely cold feeling, like being hidden in the dark corner of my musty basement I was so terrified of when I was little. That icky, all alone, dark, unsafe, jittery feeling. And then the locket is open and it's that very opposite public feeling. Like feeling naked in front of your junior class in high school with a big zit on your nose and your weird birth mark only your mom and dad know about. That exposed, embarrassed, all-to-intimate feeling you try so intensely claw and scrape away from.
Once the locket is opened you're left with a scraped knee and elbow, stinging, dirty, with bits and pieces of dirt left to remind you that it was you that opened the locket in the first place.
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