Progressive Facebook, Day Six, Part Two: "Sometimes We Put Up Walls."

Wow. Glitches fix themselves quickly sometimes. I can once again see the Flair! Which means, it's time to expound upon another thought-provoking piece!

It's another simple looking one today, black words on a white background. But what it says is what's important, and this one really got to me. "Sometimes we put up walls. Not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to knock them down." I'll warn ya'll know: this blog will be focused on myself. But I feel it applies to everyone.

I am absolutely guilty of doing that, on many, many occasions. My entire life, I have had this deep-rooted need to know for sure who actually cared. So I hid. I hid behind walls of false smiles and truths avoided. I hid behind the trouble and drama of my friend's lives, choosing to listen to them instead of facing and conquering my own problems.

I hid for most of my life behind my walls, and it was a very lonely existence. The walls weren't detected by those who never knew me without them. No one was able to truly get close to me, because they couldn't see my walls. I had trapped myself, condemned myself to a life of loneliness and insecurities, never knowing who really cared.

All I wanted was for someone to be persistent when I avoided something, to run into those walls, and knock them down. I wanted someone to let me cry on their shoulder, someone to support me and help me overcome the doubts and fears that plagued my every waking hour. But no one knew...no one, not even my closest friends, not even my family.

I know I'm not alone in having done this. Everyone puts up walls at some point or another. So someone out there, maybe even someone here on ProgressiveU, has imprisoned themselves like I have. And once you're there, it's nearly impossible to get out on your own.

For me, I had help. That help came in the form of the internet, complete with all its unreliability and glitches. I am more capable of expressing myself and how I feel through the written word, so much so that I wasn't even aware of it until I made some close friends online, the best of whom I met through sharing fanfiction. My penpal and spirit-twin, known as Luna Silvereyes, affectionately dubbed as Lunas, picked up on my mood shifts right away. She could always tell when something was wrong. She was the first to find my walls, even if she wsn't fully aware that she had done so.

But when I avoided talking about things, she countered by sharing some of her experiences. Because she tended to share first, I was more comfortable talking. And, slowly but surely, she began to knock down the walls that held me captive. Many of them fell by her hands, and my friends in real life noticed the difference in me. I think I may have even knocked down a few walls of hers, too. I know she cares. She knows I care. There isn't any need to hide from each other behind walls anymore, and both of our self-images has gotten a big boost from our friendship. She is my closest friend, my honorary nee-chan, and someone I know I can talk to about anything, and someone who will talk to me about anything because she knows I'm there to listen.

That is the greatest kind of friendship. That is what we're looking for when we build those walls around us. We want to find someone who really and truly cares, and can, through patience, a little bit at a time, knock down our walls and give us a breath of fresh air, a new outlook on life, and the reassurance that we're not alone, that someone really is there for us.

But sadly, she couldn't knock down all my walls. There were some closer to my heart, some that I was convinced I would never let anyone find. Every time someone got close, I got hurt, and I did not want that to happen again.

And once again, sharing fanfiction led me to Twentay, aka Twen. He isn't the kind of person I've been accustomed to dealing with. Not a single guy had ever flirted with me before him. Needless to say, many more walls went up when I firs met him. Not a single guy had ever truly taken into account what I thought, what I had to say, and what I was feeling. When I realized that he did, those new walls crumbled. And like a raging storm, he's gotten close to my heart and decimated most of my walls.

I still have some. But I'm no longer trapped by them. For the most part, they don't hold me back. And that's the way it should be. Putting up walls as a sort of unspoken challenge to those you encounter to prove to you that they really care is not a bad thing. If someone cares, they'll knock those walls over, whether they're aware of it or not. It may take time, and it may happen so quickly you're swept of your feet and stumbling along through the debris. You can never tell.

So go ahead, throw up the occasional wall. Just please, don't wall yourself in. Don't sentence yourself to loneliness and uncertainty. And if you know someone who has a wall that needs tearing down, see if you can do the job. It'll mean more to them in the end than you might ever realize.

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