The Walls I Built

When I started walking alone.

It wasn't a decision. More like a slow realization that the path everyone else was on—the laughter, the easy connections, the conversations that flowed without effort—didn't quite lead where I was standing.

Their conversations felt foreign to me. Not wrong, just... not mine. I watched people grieve in ways I couldn't recognize, celebrate things that didn’t understand. And for a while, I tried. I really did. I shaped myself to fit. I practiced loving what they loved, feeling what they felt. But my heart had its own rhythm, and no matter how hard I listened, I couldn't hear theirs.

So I stopped trying to keep up.

I stayed on the edges. And from there, I started noticing things.

Beauty in places they overlooked. A cracked window at dusk. The way people passed each other living their own life. Pain, too, in moments they dismissed. Small details. Loud rain. Things that happened right in front of them, and they just... didn't see.

I’m not cold. Never distant because I don’t care. I’m distant because I’m lost. Lost in a world that doesn’t see me as I am. And everything I love—truly love—I love alone.

That was the first wall.

Because somewhere along the way, I started wanting things I'd trained myself not to want. Affection. Connection. Someone to sit across from me and just... stay.

But wanting something and reaching for it are two different things.

Every time I got close, something in me pulled back. A hand would reach toward me, and I'd find my own hands already closed. Someone would ask how I was, and I'd say "fine" before the question even landed. I craved being seen, but I hid. I wanted to be heard, but I stayed silent.

How can anyone know me, I thought, when I show them nothing?

How can I be found if I never let myself be there?

It doesn’t make sense. Even to me. I'd beg to be left alone, then wonder why no one stayed. I'd push people away, then ache for the warmth I'd just rejected.

That was the second wall.

The real work, I realized much later, wasn't finding love.

It was breaking down the walls I'd built against it.

I'm still working on that part.

Some days I can almost hear the other side—the sound of someone simply waiting. Not asking for anything. Not trying to fix me. Just... there. Holding space for the version of me that doesn't have to perform.

I don't know if I'll ever fully open the door.

But I've started touching it, sometimes. Testing the weight. Remembering that walls, however high, however old, are still just things we built.

And things we build, we can also take down.

Slowly.

One brick at a time.