Breaking Down the Walls

As I sit here, reflecting on the walls I’ve built around myself, I can’t help but acknowledge how many of them were constructed in the earliest chapters of my life; moments I didn’t fully understand but have carried with me ever since. Walls that, at the time, were my only way of protecting myself, from pain, rejection, and the hollow ache of not being seen or understood in the way I so desperately needed.

Looking back, I now recognize that these walls weren’t just barriers to keep others out; they were shields to protect a heart that felt fragile, a spirit that felt unseen. For years, I existed in a space where I gave love effortlessly, a type of self-abandonment, pouring from an empty cup while feeling utterly disconnected from receiving love in return. And if I’m being truly honest, not just with you reading this but with myself, I can admit there’s been resentment simmering beneath the surface.

My relationship with my caregivers, especially my mother, was always complicated. Love was present, but it wasn’t unconditional, at least not in the form I needed most. There were moments of emotional absence, times when comfort felt like a foreign concept, times when I felt like my feelings didn’t have a safe place to land. It’s taken me years to understand that my mother was grappling with the same wounds, her own emotional neglect passed down through generations. And in that realization, I see the profound cycle, the way these patterns travel up my ancestral line.

As a child, I couldn’t comprehend these things. All I knew was that something was missing, and so I began to internalize that maybe love wasn’t safe. Maybe being vulnerable wasn’t worth the risk if it only led to pain. Slowly but surely, I built walls, like my mother before me. Invisible, yet impenetrable. I internalized this sense of unworthiness, a belief that maybe I didn’t deserve love in its most nourishing form because I wasn’t enough.

These wounds didn’t just affect my romantic relationships. They seeped into friendships and ultimately into my relationship with myself. Every interaction became colored by this unspoken fear that love would always come with strings attached, or worse, that it would leave me feeling hollow and unseen.

I’ve spoken before about my struggle with vulnerability, how I’ve retreated when things felt too close, too real. But now, as I reflect more deeply, I see that this was just another layer of armor, protecting me from a world that felt unsafe, uncertain.

This mistrust wasn’t a conscious choice; it was born out of survival. It became the lens through which I navigated life, the armor I didn’t even know I was wearing. And it wasn’t just romantic partners who were kept at arm’s length. It spilled into my friendships, where I found myself holding people back, afraid to be truly seen, afraid that even if the love was there, it wouldn’t be real. I’ve spent so much time telling myself that I was fine, that I didn’t need anything more than the love I was able to give. But deep down, I was always yearning for more. I’ve been aching to break down these walls, to let love in, to finally feel the love that has been waiting for me all along.

What I’m realizing now is that this fear of receiving love, this deep wound of feeling unworthy, started with those early relationships, the ones that were supposed to show me what unconditional love looked like. Instead, they left me uncertain, mistrusting of the very thing I craved most. And so, I’ve spent my life waiting for love but too afraid to let it in. The walls that once protected me have become the very things holding me back.

The journey to untangle all of these beliefs, to unravel the narratives that have shaped my world, has been hard. But it’s also been necessary. I’m learning to see that those walls, while they were built for survival, no longer serve me. They are no longer needed. And more importantly, I am learning to trust in love again, to trust that I am worthy of receiving love in all of its imperfect, messy, beautiful forms.

This journey isn’t easy. Taking down these walls, brick by brick, is uncomfortable and terrifying. But I believe in it. I believe in this process of relearning how to love myself and how to allow love to flow into my life.

That’s why I wrote the song Walls Within. It holds the truth of where I’ve been and where I long to go. Every lyric feels like a chisel against the stone I once built around my heart, carving out light where there was only shadow. It reminds me that the walls are not permanent, that I have the choice, every day, to let them soften.

And as I write these words, I feel a quiet shift.

The walls are still there, but cracks are forming, and through them, light is starting to spill in. For the first time in a long time, I’m not just surviving behind them, I’m beginning to imagine what life could feel like beyond them.