In my late teenage years, I built a wall of shame. It was agonizing at first but after a while, loneliness becomes an addiction. Like most addictions, it was easily deniable but then when I noticed its consequences it became a reason to change. I built my wall of shame with superglue and bricks of steel. It hurt each time I bounded myself against it and pounded savagely, trying to take it down.
Some walls just have to stay up and sometimes we are expected to wait to see if any force of nature would be strong enough to tear my wall down. I graduated High School In May of 1967 and there I would have the potential of the best, with my incredible intellect, but I would waste it away on the carpeted floor of my one-bedroom apartment. catapulted into a world of hallucinations, it would be there I would finally learn to break my wall.
Not exactly break but more like strategically climb the wall and plop onto untouched territory. One night in that same summer of 1967; I woke up under the immortal moon, my body pumped with delusions and intense head chemicals, I stole some cash from my roommate and took a bus down to London, with only a few pounds in my jeans, an empty box of cigarettes and a pen I used to write a hasty goodbye letter to my mother, I may see again with this pair of eyes. Once I boarded the early morning bus I had completely forgotten what I had even done to get there. I sat down stupidly and patiently rode the way to London City, the steam from the morning cooled, I felt suddenly ridiculous. Once you cross the wall that stole years of pain from you, the end result is the epiphany of freedom. However, I won’t lie to you; I didn't use my freedom wisely. I squatted in an old British warehouse and licked crack-off candy wrappers, and lit fires for weak warmth. Thankfully, It didn't last long.
I made a phone call one cold morning to my Mother; begging her to take me back to Oxford, and with a swallow of pride; she did. I was ridiculous, but my legs were numb, and I hadn't eaten in days. There I would attend the University of Oxford and quiet down into tamed college life, performing pre-mature responsibility, portraying a character, modelled after millions of clones, that swarmed the halls around me. After I made the choice to leave my wall of shame, I never dared to go back behind it, and away I kept on at a steady pace, leaving the wall farther and farther. Until the clones, began to look differently, as more dimensions appeared beneath the titles were wore. And those titles, they evolved. Those that hurt me, faded from my once pubescent conscious.
Then I arrived to the happiest place I’ve ever had the luxury to be, finally I was 22, my wall was a distant memory I may have just imagined. An idea I visualized, and constructed with bricks of assumption. I’ve learned not to expect much, that way all pleasure was mine and dread couldn’t surprise me.
