Beyond the Wall

So being lonely is like a constant battle and recently I’ve been thinking of it in terms of building a wall which you didn’t intend to build but can end up being the most robust and well build wall ever to have been built. We talk about how we have to have building blocks and strong foundations to be healthy adults and have healthy relationships and I think, sadly, we apply the same logic to every aspect of our life. When we build a lonely life we do so very successfully, making it very hard to change. Let me explain how I think this happens:

Let’s start with a brick, or maybe a few…..it might be that growing up circumstances were a little lonely for one reason or another. It might some tragedy happened, rand this caused you to feel the pain of loneliness at some point in your life. It might be a combination of all or none of these factors, it could be that as you developed into adulthood you simply found it hard to find people to connect with and always felt a little outside of everything.

This brick, these bricks, are the start of your wall.

Over time your stack of bricks will grow, it won’t be a tidy built up wall so you won’t really understand it but here are some things which will add bricks to your stack:

• I text my friend and she didn’t text back – immediately.

• I had a terrible first date, or second date, or relationship.

• The suggestion I made in that meeting was met with total silence.

• Some of my friends have organised an activity and not invited me.

• I have to attend a wedding alone, again.

• I’ve woken up after another one night stand no idea what I am or who the person next to me is.

• I’ve been dumped.

• I can’t seem to talk to anyone about how I really feel – I opened up and no-one cared.

• I didn’t get that promotion and all the good work seems to be going to someone else.

• No-one asks me how I’m feeling.

• I don’t get hugged much.

• It’s hard for people to understand me so I have to try and be less like me to fit in.

• I’ve made some decisions in life which have not brought me happiness.

• I miss XXXX dog/friend/lover/partner/parent so much sometimes I can’t breathe.

• My diary is empty.

All these small and seemingly inconsequential thoughts create a stack of little bricks of loneliness that you surround yourself with at all times. What are yours? You have a thought and you can feel it creating itself into something firmer as it keeps coming back….we all, I believe have these thoughts.

You don’t even realise it but now the wall has a role and a purpose in your life – it’s protecting you. You stand behind all these little bricks of pain, loneliness, shame, guilt, humiliation, despair and you begin to learn what behaviours reinforce the wall and which ones cause it to shake.

Something else also happens at this point I think the wall in a way becomes part of your identity. This wall begins to define how you interact with the world and begins to give you strength and so you honour and love the wall. In fact the wall is the only thing keeping you safe from everything else out there so sometimes you might even add a brick or two yourself – unconsciously of course but you will create situations in which people can only let you down and then use that event to reinforce your wall.

Now you are some strange super powered part human part wall existing in a world, going to work every day, in relationships – doing a life. And yet you are barricaded in. Entirely.

We might see symptoms of this in our own behaviour or that of those around us so we might see people unable to talk openly or authentically about painful events because if one brick falls they will be so afraid the whole wall will fall.

Again we might see people creating expectations which are unachievable in order to protect against anyone knocking through the wall, the wall begins to speak. You'll begin to create conditions which no-one can meet in order to maintain your protection: they didn't reply quick enough, the job wasn't exactly the right salary, the date had some small "problem" which meant he wasn't Mr. Perfect.

The wall and the protection it offers makes us create ever more impossible conditions that no situation could match and then revel in the deliciousness of our failed attempts at connection like a prophet.

Doors & Windows

I had forgotten to build a door into my wall and so they only way through would be total collapse – and that’s how it felt. It felt like if I let one person or event slip through, if someone saw a crack in my persona or if I strayed into an area of conversation where I might reveal something the wall would collapse and I would be horrifyingly exposed. And by exposed I mean either a pile of crying jelly on the floor in the office or potentially covered in vomit on a date - those were genuine fears I had and would do anything to avoid. The wall stopped those from happening. Or so I thought.

At some point a crack appeared, more about that another time, I realised the wall was fallible and that realisation allowed me to see through and to see interesting things that the wall was preventing me from seeing. In truth the wall had stopped me feeling – it was preventing me from BEING in the world, feeling anything, connecting to anyone.

The wall soon began to feel like a dark cave where I wasn’t living I was just surviving and I wanted to get out so I put a door in. I knew I could go back in if I wanted too but also I could leave when I wanted too.

So what’s the point of all this for you I hear you ask? Good question and thank you for sticking with me so long with this slightly painful analogy.

Check your bricks? Some are necessary for protection in certain environments I get that and some are necessary with certain people as well – also totally get that too. And yet take a look when you come to a connection point in life – where you need to reach people, OR importantly you want people to reach you and check your bricks?

1. What about how you feel is based on previous hurt or pain?

2. What is based on your perception that your strength and lack of vulnerability is your power?

3. How important is it to you that you maintain your ability to feel nothing, need nothing, want nothing?

4. How often are the words in your mouth or your heart but something stops them from spilling out? Examine that feeling, examine that blockage and work it back.

5. Who are the people you respect and value and do they have walls?

If doors are too much create windows and know that they will get dirty. Let someone in. Let them let you down, let them hurt you and know that it will be okay. Don’t let that fill up the hole you created.

Self-preservation is important and I realise how vital it can be for us all and I just ask that you consider what you might be preserving yourself from because in my experience whilst life is gritty and dirty and painful and hard, those experiences are wildly better than becoming stuck behind a wall watching it happen all around you.

Vic x