About that wall...

Photo by MabelAmber on Pixabay

Since November 2016, there has been an awful lot of big talk about walls. Got to protect ourselves, right? There are a lot of bad hombres out there, after all.

Here's the thing. I get it.

Keep reading, please. I'm still the same center-left tree-hugger – or far-left liberal nutjob, depending on your lens – that I've been far longer than most of you have known me.

Still. I know a thing or two about walls. And I bet if I pushed hard enough, you'd admit that you do too.

Think about it. Walls aren't all bad. It's March 8 in the South and I'm sitting here watching it snow. I'm pretty dang grateful to have a set of sturdy walls between me and all of that.

Or take my cats. True, they are not fans of walls unless said walls can be climbed. But walls sure come in handy when they won't stop fighting and need to be confined to separate corners!

It's not really snow or cats that are leading me down this thought-path, however. I'm thinking more of the times walls don't work.

Like border walls.

Like school walls.

Photo by Oladimejj Odunsi on Unsplash 

Like the walls we build around our personal space, both physical and emotional.

I don't know about you, but I've got a few too many of those walls. I'm talking several layers thick, like some kind of medieval fortress for my soul. It's a wall made of a lot of different materials – the election, yes, school violence, yes, but so much more. Things like the disaster that was my marriage. Learning that "innocent until proven guilty" is just a pretty phrase unless you have the right combination of color, cash, and connections. The lonely exhaustion of solo parenting, knowing I can never come close to being everything my kids deserve. The dozens of betrayals, large and small, the relationships cherished and lost, the fear of being hurt again. None of these building blocks are necessarily all that effective on their own, but stacked together, they're pretty hard to breach. If you add that I'm a natural introvert, perfectly content to be left to my own devices, well, if I'm not careful my self-made fortress can suit me awfully well.

Photo by Angello Lopez on Unsplash 

The thing is, even introverts are not made to live alone. A house built for one is not necessarily much of a home. I know this, and so I'm trying. Through heartbreak, trial, and error, I think I've found my tribe, the ones who are still and always there when the dust clears after life's many storms. Even when I wall myself in for self-protection, once I start tearing that structure down, I find them there on the other side, patiently waiting for me to emerge.

I've not yet been able to quit my wall habit. Maybe I never will. But I am happy to report that I am losing my touch. The walls aren't as thick as they used to be, and it takes less to knock them down. It's a work-in-progress, though. I still have a mean perfectionist streak that would love to stack every block so perfectly that nothing can get in.

If 40+ years on the planet have taught me anything, though, it's that perfectionism is overrated. Life is fuller, richer, better in the gaps, the places where you leave a way out... and in.

Photo by MissEJB on Pixabay