Walls


We take walls for granted.  Wall separate the area you sleep in from the area you shit in.  Walls were erected throughout history to keep foreign invaders out of a kingdom.  Walls make sense.  We also build up metaphorical walls around us so we do not get hurt.  Often after a painful event, we build walls around us to keep us safe.  Even though these walls make sense, are they good?  We all do it.  It could be from a nasty breakup, the death of a family member, a tragic event, or a friend’s betrayal.  We don’t want to get hurt again.

While walls might stabilize our present state of mind so we can deal with our own emotions, they are detrimental to our development.  Just as we cannot grow if we stay within our walls, neither can we let people in.  We have all been hurt by someone, and while we say we want to let people in, our actions contradict that.  This isn’t to say we shouldn’t have walls, but we need to know when to tear them down.

I have been following my character’s (Evan Willcox) approach, and it has not been helping.  I followed the approach because it is me.  It is how I would have reacted to the underlying situations in the books.  Sometimes it takes an unbiased outsider to make you see your mistakes, to tell you that you’re doing it wrong, to think.  I have built walls that have been standing for years.  I built walls so high that I could no longer feel.  I did not want to feel.  Unfortunately, it has been unfair to my family, friends, and those who have tried getting close to me in the past.

How long have these walls been standing?  After a lot of reflection (and still more to go), close to twelve years.  Not knowing whether my youngest son would survive for nearly two years takes its toll.  I thought I had to be the unwavering rock the family needed to survive.  I could not show weakness.  I buried my emotions deep in the dungeons of my soul and built the strongest walls I could.  Unfortunately, I took care of those walls for too long.  Every time someone knocked some bricks loose in my wall, I would repair it and add another layer.  This practice is self destructive.  Over the last twelve years, I have grown, but I have been confined by my walls.  I can no longer do that.  I do not want to end up like Evan Willcox in my books.  It is weird how a sci-fi action/adventure book can be a prophecy of what is to come even though I had no idea at the time.  What is even more surprising is that in this fourth book, Evan Willcox either self destructs or tears down his walls.  I guess I wanted to tear down my own personal walls, but I had forgotten they existed.  I wrote about it without knowing why I wrote about it.  I believe everything in life can teach us many lessons.  We just have to have our eyes open enough to see them and our minds open to accept them.

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One response to “Walls”

  1. Twelve years is a long time to build and reinforce walls. You would need a very strong motivation to want to change what you’ve built to protect yourself. It would have to be disassembled in pieces, addressing how each layer was put up and why. Does it benefit you now? Could it be hindering you from feeling emotions that can put light into your life?

    I remember having walls up so thick that even having a ton of friends, none of them truly knew me. I protected myself from betrayal, pain, abandonment etc. Feeling self-sufficient to the point where I no longer knew how to have a healthy friendship. I was a giver, a helper, a fixer. But to let someone else in, no. I went 5 years without crying a single tear. I thought it made me strong. Until I realized it was more of a numbness. I didn’t have pain, but I also didn’t have pleasure.

    Isolating ourselves can be self-destructive, I agree. But I think it’s also important to pick and confide in people carefully. Choose wisely. Or it just validates the disappointment and fortifies the walls.

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