A story about sadness
Mopsy and the Door That Stayed Shut
When Mopsy feels blue, Mopsy hides. A story about the difference between needing space and disappearing.
3 minutes to read aloud · 😢 Sad
Watch it read aloud · 4 min
When Mopsy feels blue, Mopsy goes to her room and shuts the door.
It makes sense, if you think about it. Sad is a heavy, slow, secret sort of feeling, and it does not want anybody looking at it. So the door goes shut, and the curtains go across, and Mopsy curls up small, and waits for the blue to go away by itself.
Sometimes the blue takes a very long time to go away by itself.
On Tuesday, Mopsy shut the door.
On Wednesday, the door was still shut. Somebody left toast outside it.
On Thursday, Pinky knocked.
"Mopsy? It's me. I'm not coming in unless you want. I'm just going to sit out here for a bit."
And Pinky sat down on the landing with her back against Mopsy's door, and hummed, very quietly, and said nothing else at all.
Inside, Mopsy listened.
The strange thing was that the blue did not get bigger with somebody there. Mopsy had always thought it would. Mopsy had always thought that if anybody saw it, the sad would spill out everywhere and never stop.
After a while Mopsy said, through the door, "It's not about anything."
"That's alright," said Pinky. "It doesn't have to be about anything."
"I just feel heavy."
"I know."
Mopsy cried then. Proper crying, the loud sort, the sort you cannot do quietly. And Pinky stayed on the other side of the door and let her, and did not once say don't cry.
When it was finished, Mopsy felt scraped-out and tired and oddly clean, the way the sky looks after rain.
The door opened.
"Can I sit with you for a bit?" said Mopsy.
"That's my line," said Pinky.
They sat on the landing together and ate the cold toast, which was horrible, and Mopsy laughed for the first time in three days.
The blue came back the next week, because it does. But this time Mopsy left the door open.
