more walls talk

"Intimacy is meaningless without barriers to overcome--and to lower."
- Diane Duane

Now, I don't read Diane Duane.  Couldn't tell you what she's written without looking it up (but that's what librarians are known for, right?).  But Mr. B sent me this quote about a year ago when I was having issues coming to terms with the fact that someone that I was in love with (note the "in love" not "loving") had walls higher and more impenetrable than mine. 

I've already blogged about the difference between being in love with someone and truly loving someone.  And in some ways, this quote relates better to that post than the one that inspired it.  I said in that post that I don't think walls are unhealthy, as long as you know they're there and when to raise and lower them to let people in.  And that's what I've been thinking about since the last post.  Those walls.  Not loving or being in love, but true trust and intimacy. 

I let very few people in.  I know I didn't let my not-soon-enough-ex in, but for all those years, I didn't know it.  Because I didn't know me.  I hadn't let myself in.  Which is,  in a lot of ways, what this quote says to me.  You have to know yourself, truly be intimate with yourself, like yourself, before you can lower your walls and let someone else in. 

And that's what I've spent the last year doing.  Getting to know me again.  After so many years of denying me, ignoring me, in some ways destroying me, I have started discovering me.  Letting the walls down for myself and becoming intimate with me.  And this allows me to understand my relationships with others and let them in when I want.  Because I'll never get rid of my walls - I'll never trust completely or let someone totally in (I don't understand people who can) - but understanding them is huge.