Thursday, May 9, 2013

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.


2 comments:

  1. good for you. it sounds like you have some heavy work ahead of you. i trust you'll "wear" the hard hat, safety goggles and gloves needed to break down that wall--even if only figuratively!

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    1. I do have some heavy work ahead of me. I already have not done a great job in handling this load but I will not give up. So often I just back down and curl up and disappear behind the wall. Yes I have and will screw up but I won't stop trying to break down the wall.

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