a room of one's own

Rooms. They have walls, windows, doors. Usually. Unless you live in some sort of windowless, wall-less, doorless vacuum, in which case, weird.

Windows and doors reference opportunity. "You only have a certain window of opportunity here, Mr. Smith, to effectively eradicate your testicular cancer." "As each door closes, another one opens, and that one could be the door to a brand new, better paying stripper job, Bobbi Sue!" What do people say about walls?

Well, I guess you could say the purpose of a wall is to divide, right? They divide rooms, they divide countries, they separate one space from another. Even glass walls, while transparent, don't exactly let you walk right through them. But I know some idiot is going to think it's just an open space and do it anyway.

I am that idiot. I'm that person, in many ways, who doesn't understand the concept of walls, especially glass ones. Admittedly, this can be a fault sometimes. For instance, there is such a thing as too much information, and I've been guilty of giving away too much at times. I'm also still here, giving too much all over again, so it couldn't have damaged me that badly.

I've pretty much always been an open book. The great value of privacy is just lost on me. Of course, there are certain things that I don't really talk about and there are things I don't like talking about, but I never hold things too deep and hidden inside. Cause, what if they get lost? Keep in mind we're talking about secrets - life experiences, dreams, fears, fantasies, really disgusting horrible habits - not private parts. I'm so not open with my private parts and the world is better for it.

Maybe it's not that I don't understand the concept of walls, but I've rejected them. I found that they just doesn't work with the way I live my life. I've had many friends who refuse to let me in. And it's not like I'm banging on the doors demanding that they spill their scary secrets. Trust me, I don't want to know about your ass-scratching habit as much as you don't want me to know about your ass-scratching habit. So, I'm not going to beg. Ultimately, it's up to you if you want to let me in. I've just realized that we're not going to be as close as we could be until you do. For some friendships and relationships, this suits things just fine and there are no worries. For others, the walls just get built too high and you reach a point where things don't grow anymore. How high is one expected to jump, after all?

There are so many different kind of walls people have. There are stucco walls, electric walls, there are gross wooden paneled walls, and there are also the walls that addicts put up. I've known a few addicts in my life, and their walls tend to be the most confusing of all. One minute, they're letting you in with almost too much information, and the next minute, they're angrily shoving you out of their life. They build walls faster than Las Vegas builds new strip malls. This is hard because it's like you're navigating a maze that keeps rebuilding itself to keep you in the puzzle for life. You're lucky if you can escape it.

Some people have the love wall, which is pretty and is red with pink heart wallpaper. No, this is the wall that gets built after their previous love went wrong. Thus, it's usually huge; a compound of brick and cement, backed by unbreakable steel, followed by several feet of reinforcements built thousands of feet high. This is an equally frustrating wall, because what about the new loves? Is it the job of the new love to take up construction and tear down the wall to make room for an open new living room with enough space for a love seat? Or is it the job of the lover who hides behind those walls to demolish that wall and open themselves up to what's behind it? Whoever's job it is, I paid a shit ton of money for this love seat from Pottery Barn so somebody better be sitting on it.

Lots of people have perfectly "legit reasons" for having these walls up and most of those reasons have to do with protecting themselves from pain. Maybe I'm just reckless, but I have not yet felt a pain that I haven't recovered from. That sort of liberation is undoubtedly part of what helps me try to live my life without walls. When you have little to fear, there's little reason to make decisions based out of fear. I believe that building your walls is a decision made out of fear - you're scared to get hurt, you're scared to let someone in and see who you really are, you're scared of the endless possibilities.

What's interesting is that the ones with walls don't realize that their walls have windows - huge bay windows that expose an island paradise, or chiseled cracks, if they're of the imperfect type. These windows, these cracks let others peer inside to see what's behind. This is how they are able to make and keep friends, because no true blue friendship can be sustained without some level of intimacy. The people who are still around, or want to see more, after they've already seen through what you've built up - those are the ones worth keeping.

I don't want to preach. I want folks to think about the real benefits of these walls. What has your wall done for you lately? Ooo-ooo-ooo-yeah! You can plant seeds in a garden and enclose that garden with a greenhouse. Kind of counterproductive if you ask me, cause there is a limit to life's growth in that greenhouse. The walls you build will limit you, at some point, in some way or another. That's a wall's job. Its main function. Its modus operandi.

Is it really worth the effort you're putting forth to protect yourself, to hide yourself, to separate yourself, to divide yourself? Once you build four of those walls, you've locked yourself in and you might as well pad that shit cause you're just going to drive yourself crazy.

Protect yourself from pain in effective ways - trust your instincts, they're in place to help you survive; trust what you know; don't go around doing stupid things; take an ibuprofen. Think about it. Build a door or jump out of a window. You never know how testicular cancer-free you can be, or what strip club you can work at, or how hard you can fall in such sweet, complex, adventurous, deep, rewarding love.