Walls keep things out.
They also keep things in.
Walls are built to keep livestock from traipsing off property.
Walls are built to keep the neighbors from seeing into your private oasis of a back yard.
Walls are built for borders.
Walls are built to protect.
But walls are often built in fear. Fear of losing something, fear of being harmed.
Fear of the unknown.
(I often build walls in my mind out of fear... we all do it to one degree or another.)
We hide behind our walls, content to be isolate in our own little prisons.
I've been on something of a crusade for the last few years to help people find and create doorways in their walls... ways to find community, ways to let people in, ways to help us find meaning.
But sometimes we are kept inside these walls against our will.
Depression is that wall for me.
At times it holds me captive, and I am too weak to try and break down the wall from the inside.
People on the outside can't tell someone is trapped, so they don't try to break it down from the outside either.
Every once in a while, a piece of the wall happens to chip away a little bit, and I can see the outside world. Curious eyes peer in to see what this person is that was just exposed. HELP ME - I ask. But we are passing oddities in a world of constantly rotating distractions.
I want to get OUT of here.
I look up, and don't see anything other than sky. My wall is just that - a wall... nothing more.
There is no roof to keep the rain out, so I get wet.
But I also can see the stars, and so I get lost in them sometimes. Letting my soul get picked up and carried into outer space. Floating.
Away.
Free.
Has it been 10 minutes? An hour? A day?
I don't know. But I do know that in my mind, I escaped. And that escape was glorious.
Walls.
Walls keep things out.
But they also keep things in.
You never know what a wall is really doing there... and some walls are meant to be knocked down.
(Free verse and photography by me, Steven Bowman)
