The Grand Villain And A Concrete Wall

Heartbreak. It’s hard work getting past it but hard work never scared me. It’s lack of hope that terrifies me. Yet, my automatic reaction has been to freeze up into a wall of silence, stoicism, concrete hardness. There is no hope beyond a wall of that nature.

I decided to start the year approaching this differently. Who could I be, if I was not that wall-builder? It felt difficult, so difficult. I told myself difficult never scared me. Coupled with that determination, comes an idea. What if wall-building is simply a habit, and not my most ‘natural’ reaction to things? It’s a thought, one that I am willing to hook onto. Habits, I can make or break.

So, what if all the heartache I feel is just that and not some indication of the horribleness of the world, society and men? What if it’s just that – feelings? I am not invalidating emotion. I live by my emotions. But they are just that, what I feel. They do not have to have anything to do with other people’s motivations. Realistically, most other people are just like me, bumbling along through life, accidentally knocking into each other, not having the ability to recognise their own emotions, let alone other people’s.

There is a large myth that it is easy for each of us to buy into of the Grand Villain. We turn old lovers, friends who’ve let us down, family members who have disappointed us, colleagues who have crossed us and pretty much everything that goes against what we want, into the Grand Villain. The Grand Villain must sit in his/her lair, doing  nothing but scheming about how to make our lives utterly miserable. Do you do that? Do you even spend that much time thinking about your own life, let alone someone else’s?

I guess it’s easier for us to believe in that than to stop and consider that stuff happens to us that is bad, unjust, scary and otherwise unpleasant. It means acknowledging that life is totally random. It means accepting that there’s no such thing as safety or security. It means taking responsibility to do what one can. It means letting go and trusting that things will be okay and if not, well, they won’t. It means saying, I can’t even tell how many more things that means. It’s really, really difficult.
But you know what? It carries hope, which is something my concrete wall doesn’t. The concrete wall keeps the Grand Villain inside with me. And frankly, I’m done with that guy. So goodbye and let’s open those gates and let some life in.