All my life, I’ve been building walls.

An opportunity shows up, yet I don’t go for it because ‘what if I screw up?’

It adds a brick.

I make a mistake, then spend years beating myself up for the consequences.

It adds another.

Someone breaks my heart, then every person that comes after only reminds me of them.

It adds more bricks.

I struggle with the words on a random encounter, then walk away believing I’ll always suck with first impressions.

It adds even more of them.

I stare back at my reflection in the mirror, and realize I don’t match the image I had in mind for how I thought I should look.

It finally pours over all the cement that glues everything together.

And then I move over to the next wall. And the next. And the one after. And they all keep moving up.

Walls made up of my own ideas of myself. Of things that only happen inside my head. Of beliefs that no longer make sense.

But it feels okay, for I get to hide behind them. I try jumping over every now and then. Yet, what I find, scares me back to my spot. And I start making a home out of it. Because, well, at least I tried, but things just didn’t work out.

Only recently have I realized that my walls took some very long years to build up. And so, it won’t make sense to jump over and forget that no matter how far I go, they will forever exist.

Because each and every brick needs to be held and separately dealt with.

Some of them might be too heavy.

Some might feel too dark.

Some might take forever to move from where they are.

And some, I might be surprised are even there, for they‘d been pushed all the way down. And yet their impact is still so evident despite how invisible they might have felt.

Every brick has a story. And every story has something to tell. Once it’s been heard, the brick fades away as if it never even were. And that, is the only way I now realize I can bring my walls down.

I don’t need to break through them.

I don’t need to jump over and ignore them.

I don’t need to wait behind for someone to come save me from them.

I just need to be ready to hold the bricks myself. And get to know their stories. One brick at a time. And they’ll totally take care of the rest.

April 9, 2020