The Key She Turns Twice

The apartment is on the second floor and the door is gray and it is hers, and Simone has had the key since the ninth of January.

Nine years she did not have a key. That is the plain fact underneath this and it is as much as this article is going to say about it. Nine years in a house where the door was not hers, in an arrangement that is over, and she is out, and she is safe, and everybody who knows says so.

Here is her night.

Eleven o'clock. She locks the door. She turns the key and she hears it and she pushes the handle down to feel it hold.

Eleven twenty. She gets up and checks it.

Half past midnight. She checks it.

And then usually once more, some time after two, and that is the one she minds, because that is the one where she is standing in her own hallway in the dark, in her own apartment, with her hand on her own lock, and she is thirty-eight years old.

Nobody knows. Her friend Karen stayed over in March and Simone did not check it at all that night, and lay awake instead until four, and got up and made breakfast and was fine.

Here is the day it caught.

Her nephew, nine, staying over, got up for water and found her at the door at two in the morning.

He said, "Auntie, is somebody there?"

And she said, "No, baby. Go back to bed."

And he said, "Then why are you at the door?"

And Simone said, "Just checking," and took him back, and sat on the edge of his bed until he went off, and then sat in her own kitchen until the light came up, because a nine-year-old had asked her a question she has never once asked herself.

You know this. Out, safe, with your own key, and a body that has not accepted the news and goes on doing the job it did for years in a building where it is no longer needed.

Somebody is already awake

Let me put down what I am not doing here, so you can stop bracing.

I am not going to tell you what you came out of, and I am not going to hand anybody a verdict. I am not going to tell you how long the checking lasts. And I am absolutely not going to tell you that a woman who is safe should feel safe, because those are two different things and the distance between them is exactly where this article finds a person.

What I will do is read you the end of Psalm 121, which is a psalm people quote the front half of.

The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.Psalm 121:8

Going out and coming in. That is a doorway. It is the Hebrew way of saying the whole of a life, and it says it by naming a threshold, which is the exact piece of architecture a person ends up standing in front of at two in the morning.

And back up a few verses, because this is the part that matters for a woman who cannot sleep:

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.Psalm 121:4

Somebody is already awake.

That is not a figure of speech in a psalm about a doorway. It is the specific claim. The keeping of that threshold does not require a person in the hallway, because there is a keeper who does not sleep, and He has been on that door since the ninth of January.

You are standing at a door that is already being kept, and the keeping does not go off duty at two in the morning. Psalm 121:4 says the keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and into a dark hallway in a second-floor apartment.

And notice the tense in verse eight. From this time forth, and even for evermore. It is not a promise about the future that starts when you feel better. It starts from this time. Tonight. In the hallway. With your hand on your own lock.

You have been kept from the moment you moved in, and not one of the four checks was what made you safe. It is written that He preserves the going out and the coming in from this time forth, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ancient watch a present one.

The checking is not the enemy

Now let me be careful here, because this is where somebody could get hurt.

I am not going to tell you the checking is a lack of faith. It is not. It is a body doing the job it was given for nine years, in a place where the job is no longer needed, and it does not know that yet because bodies find out slowly and there is no verse that speeds it up.

And I am not going to tell you to stop. Simone stopped for one night in March, out of embarrassment, and it cost her the whole night. Stopping on command is not what this is.

You are not being graded on how your body behaves at two in the morning, and there is no verse anywhere that makes a nervous system a measure of trust. Psalm 103:14 says He knows our frame, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that knowing a mercy rather than a technicality.

What I do want to change is one small thing, and it is not the checking. It is what you say while you do it.

Right now there is a woman standing at a door in the dark performing a duty she believes is hers. And the duty is not hers. It has an owner and the owner does not sleep. The hand on the lock can stay. The belief underneath it is the part that is costing you the hallway.

You have never once been the keeper of that doorway, and Psalm 121 assigns that post to somebody else entirely. It is written that He shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an assigned post a real transfer rather than a comforting idea.

Say this now rather than later, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the nights have gone somewhere darker than watchful, or if the sitting up until light has become most nights rather than some, do not carry that alone. Tell somebody this week. Karen, your sister, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. Sleep like that is worth saying plainly to a doctor, because a body is a physical thing. That is not me telling you anything about the nine years. That is me refusing to leave you in that hallway by yourself.