You woke up sad today. A heaviness in your chest, spreading out like ivy, vines tangling and overgrowing until it is hard to breathe around the green. It began last night, staying up late in order to talk to Sir, but the silence was deafening. You laughed, shaking your head and feeling sillier than usual. Drunk promises are like no promises, simple words that flow like water. A lesson learned over the years. But you don't get the chance to talk to Sir very often when you are apart, even if you are spoiled and get to see him several days a week. So the disappointment is foolish.

But the sadness comes from some place deeper. This weekend, you have spent too much time with your eyes closed, examining each brick in that wall you have built, fingers catching on rough stone and feeling the memory buried in each one. The large stones, the ones you can't even begin to chisel yet: the terror in your father's eyes when he gasped in his last breath; being alone when your starbaby died in the one place he should have been safe, and your lover and your family refused to talk about it; the night when your first boyfriend came home drunk from the bar, his pockets filled with the numbers of other ladies, and you cried in the bathroom after he took sex that you didn't want to give; the other secret that you've never told anyone.

Then there are the little bricks, the ones that cradles so perfectly inside of your palms, those little moments that have added up into sparkles of pain and shame. When your first boyfriend C would get angry and push you against the wall, punching the plaster beside your face. Or when he was upset and you tried to comfort him, and he lashed out, grabbing you and locking his arm around your throat and you couldn't breathe, and you fought because you thought you were going to die in his pickup truck outside of his parents house. You learned then how to be scared when lovers got angry. How your bestfriend doesn't believe he raped you. She is still best friends with him. The boys who cheated on you. One after another. When you comforted the girl you hated, the one who slipped into your ex-master/Curly's bed while you were dating - she told you about the night you broke up. "I was there with him, when he called and broke up with you. We were cuddling. He told me it was like kicking a puppy." When Curly left and told you, "It's because you lost your magic." You learned then how to keep the real girl locked inside, always show everyone the magical glittering Starchild. Or with Matt, when you were honest and opened up, he got angry and you fought. How you turned the most happy and motivated man you've ever met into an angry-sad-gremlinthing.

There are the bricks that aren't caused by lovers. The ones caused from the past. High school spent without real friends, just days spent writing and losing yourself in books. One of your "best friends" used to go to parties, alcohol and green and laughter, normal high school stuff. You gathered the courage one day to ask if you could go to one with her. She couldn't meet your eyes when she said, "You wouldn't have any fun at those things." And you felt swallowed up by the shame of being too dorky to be invited. Times when you felt so sad in the middle of lunch, and you would start crying, silent tears coursing down your cheeks, in the middle of a crowd and no one would see. Long-sleeves to hide the kiss of razorblades, dozens and dozens because the pain made things go silent for a bit. That night when you swallowed a bottle of pills, and tried to fall asleep but your heart was pounding too painfully hard. That became gossip too, and your "friends" wouldn't stick up for you, laughing at the jokes about the suicide attempt. So you quit school the last month of your junior year, and never went back.

There is that special brick that comes from after high school, during those college years when you did silly videos to support lovers. The unit that was your family, the first people you felt truly connected to, the pirate boys and pirate lasses, years of fun and adventures. And later, you found out what they really thought of you. How they would pull up your videos for new members to watch, laughing and making rude comments. Or when you made the bad decision to get involved with J-no, a way to kill the pain after Curly left and your heart was broken. And you met his friends, and they didn't even know your name. "He just calls you Porn-star," Kain said with a shrug.

Stupid little shameful moments, painful little bricks added one to the other, until you learned not to let people get close. Because you would see their joy and their beautiful hearts, and your world would shatter when the truth would emerge, and they weren't magical after all. They were cold and gremliny, and they hurt you, over and over again. And it became too bad, too much to handle and too much to deal with. So you just let the wall go higher, encouraged it, whispered it to grow taller and stronger. Keep everyone out, keep out the fake people, keep out the not-true friends and the not-true lovers. But they all turned out to be not-true.

You have spent this weekend looking at these bricks, examining each painful little moment, even the super tiny ones that brought shame and anger and sadness, all of it that built up high to create this level of fear. Things that you have been pushing down, pretending you have dealt with it all. But this weekend has been spent digging and prying and reliving.

And you feel raw and vulnerable and scared and in pain, and so very alone. But that's the point of breaking down walls. You have to deal with the consequences. And you are strong enough to handle it alone.