“Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, “ The Mending Wall by Robert Frost
The precariousness of people’s reactions and responses has impelled me to build a wall around myself like a security blanket. I have built walls for many reasons: to shield, to separate, to forget, to be invisible, to be left alone… whatever the logic, it is there to keep others at bay. I have used them in different times and phases of my life and to a certain extent they have helped, eased, secured, provided the freedom and privacy I thought I needed but now I feel these walls are not innate to me. There is something about a wall that feels alien to my heart. There is something about a wall that is like a scream in my gut that never ends. Like a hole, an emptiness that cannot be explained, a despair that lingers on like the smell of cigarette smoke on my hair and my clothes so that I need to wash it to take away its stench. I have come to admit now that there must come a time when I should be free of these walls because although I had felt so secure within in but walled in I find no real joy.
Comments
I enjoyed reading it Alice. Sometimes, an incident helps us build walls. By building walls, we tend to let some good opportunities escape. Like healing a fresh wound, it takes time also to put those walls down or completely destroy them.
There is a great lesson behind your blog. Thanks for sharing it with us.
To be a HERMIT needs strong will and self confidence. I am the same, I feel the same and now I am use to it. Whenever I raise the curtain from around me, there is hot waves of hypocrisy, meanness, cunningness, bureaucratic attitudes so I again enclosed myself within the walls. These walls now do not hurt me.
Thanks for reminding me of myself.