Barriers to Love

“Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
- Rumi, thirteenth century Sufi poet

Looking back at the majority of life, I see so many barriers in my life that have kept me from love: self-love, love of others, and love from others.

When I was really young, my household felt warm and connected.  I cannot really explain why it felt that way except for a few scattered memories.  This feeling is validated, though, by how I used to act. I was very adventurous and excited to explore the world. I remember hunting for frogs, making mud pies, catching bees with my hands, playing doctor with the neighborhood boys. Overall, I was fearless. Yet when the problems between my parents began to overshadow the whole house, I lost that desire to risk and explore.

My reaction to this shadow was to pull back, to put up barriers against being hurt. I began to perceive that those who were supposed to love me were really out to hurt me.  So I built the walls.

 All in all it was all just bricks in the wall. (Pink Floyd)

My parents never addressed what was going on in their relationship, and I never spoke up about what I felt, neither did my brother. So we all built walls against each other and against the world. All the hurt I felt because of my parents problems I took out on others. I never allowed people in, really in. I had friends, lots of them. I was very popular. Yet I was not real with them. I was guarded and nice.  And I always had my walls up.  

For the past several years, I have been working on taking down my wall. It has not been easy, and I am not sure how far down the wall really is, yet I am aware and trying to let people really know me. It has been awesome and painful and embarrassing and humbling. The walls are still pretty thick, and I still have work to do, will until I die, but I will break them down, for me, not for anyone else.