what we inherit

His words can hurt me to the core. He can knock me down, splayed out on the floor, cut me straight down the bone, butterfly me, rub salt in my wounds for seasoning and grill me alongside his marinated angus burgers and rare tuna steaks. After his kill, I hide. I seclude myself from everyone. I go inside my head. I shell up. And for hours afterward, for days sometimes, I cannot smile, I cannot laugh. I can only smirk. I build a wall that no one, not even the bystanders to his kill, can get behind.

And I’ve learned from this that this is what I have done with my heart, with my life. I’ve been wounded to the quick so early and often that I’ve built up so many walls, so many layers of pain that I don’t think anyone will ever knock them down. I can’t trust that someone won’t do it again. Because for all the wonderfulness that love may be, nothing can be worth this pain. Nothing.

And so I build the walls. I retreat and hide away. And in the end, I have to accept this because as much as I have been wronged, I am also the one that builds the walls. And I’ve worked hard on them. Brick by brick, with red clay and mortar on my hands, I have made a fortress around this heart of mine.