Walls Up, Walls Down
After experiencing putting my own walls up, whether in a relationship or friendship, and being on the outside of somebody else's walls, I have spend some time thinking about walls. In the physical sense, it's the wall that provide structure and support to a building or home. At the same time, wall divide what could be an open or united space. Wall can be as plain as the type and color as the day the materials were purchased and built. For others, walls can carry on the characteristics of its owner in color, building material, decorations and placement. If you ask a child about walls, these are the only type they know about. Now in the emotional sense, walls may appear as providing structure and support, but most times, that is not the case. I've been one of those people who would justify that I needed walls to protect myself. Most times I was trying to convince myself, not their person to whom I was speaking. Emotional walls truly divided an open or place people should be united - in you mind, in your heart, in your energy spaces. Â
Any relationship involves some level of risk and vulnerability. And those can be very scary. The wall(s) I built often are to ''protect" myself from being hurt or feeling pains that may come with the vulnerability. My experience has been the walls don't stop any of those risks or feelings. If anything, the walls trap me into my own mind. Like a ping pong ball bouncing in a small space, those thoughts have no place to go but bouncing off the walls built up which I believed would protect me. Just like all feelings and emotions, they need space to breath, space to spread out and make sense of things. Walls up don't allow for this. Just like a bird needs space to spread its wings for take flight, emotions need space, not walls, to be felt, experiences and process. When I think about the relationships that did not work out, most was a result of walls, on m part of the others. On the flip side of somebody else's wall, I was like Kilroy trying to peek over the top while the person I cared about stayed hidden behind the wall only showing and revealing parts of themselves that they deemed was okay. So from my side, I wasn't able to truly get to know somebody since I was only seeing the parts they were willing to show me. Walls are walls. In physical structures, they are necessary for structure and support. In emotional feelings, I would be cautious on the reliance of walls to protect as they will trap you in, limit the way emotions are processed and once they are built, are so difficult to break down. As I've written before, emotions and feelings are meant to be felt - we are human- and walls limit our ability to do that. Break down the walls. Set yourself free. Let others in. Even with the risk of being hurt, the rewards are threefold and your future self will thank you! ~ChaChaÂ
