Dismantling Rapunzel’s Tower Day By Day
At some point in my earliest years, I locked a piece of myself away behind a wall. I don’t remember the moment it happened. I have inklings, maybe, of events that could have shuttered her behind brick. She’s been there ever since. She’s the one who cries at long distance commercials (long distance is a thing that used to exist and they made really, really sappy commercials about it without the overt undertones that the Folger’s coffee commercials carry), and the one who gets in her car at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday to drive from one state to another to pick up a grieving friend and take her home.
She’s pretty great to be honest. But she’s pretty terrifying too. A psychologist would probably have a field day with the fact that I’m referring to her in the third person, to be honest. Anywho, I’m not being literal, really. I didn’t lop off a piece of myself and put it in a room or anything. But I learned at a young age that trusting people is hard and having that trust broken is even harder. To be fair, I was a child and turning off that part of myself was easier than acceptance, growth and all that. Plus, I was probably too young to be doing mature things like accepting loss or emotional growth and such.
Sitting on the front porch of my first post-college home, one of my best friends told me she didn’t feel like she really knew me. We had been friends at this point for nearly two years. I laughed it off but it struck a nerve. When she went on to explain her statement, she told me something I hadn’t even realized about myself. She said, “Rachael, you’re really good at letting people think they know you really well. You let out just enough to make us think we know all the stories, but you clearly hold back huge parts of yourself.” Okay it’s been 10 years, but that’s what I remember her saying.
Emotional intimacy scares the crap out of me. Give me a problem to solve. Ask me for advice rooted in logic. Let me be your distraction when everything else in the world is going wrong. I’m great at those things. Break into tears in front of me, and I don’t know what to do. Sure I’ve gotten a little bit better at those moments. I mean, I’m capable of being there for a friend having real emotions. And when I think of the metaphorical girl behind the wall, there are a lot more holes in it now than there used to be. I’ve been pretty lucky to make wonderful friends as an adult — friends who see the wall and do one of two things: observe it and accept it; or they do the equivalent of jumping up next to the wall and hanging off the top of it until a few more bricks fall out. They see it enough to answer my completely Femsplain brainstorm-related question, “What am I afraid of?” without even hesitating. “Emotional intimacy” is what the screenshots say.
Being vulnerable, brave, putting myself out there are things I have been working on for most of my adult life. It’s not the girl behind the wall I’m afraid of so much anymore but the people outside the wall. Did you know that getting a tattoo in a place that is never exposed to sunlight is actually more painful than anything related to fat cushioning or proximity to bone? So yes, those people you know with ink on their butts have actually been through incredibly painful experiences. I look at my own emotional resilience with the same attitude. It’s not that I don’t want break through that wall so I can connect on a deeper level with people — have real healthy grownup relations; it’s a fear of the pain that will come when a feeling isn’t returned or is betrayed.
I’m ballsy and confident. I’m good at pretending that nothing bothers me — that I have my shit together. The very knowledge that at some point I’m going to have to let someone in near enough to truly drag a scythe across my emotional soul is terrifying. So I continue on my merry way, finding more friends who are willing to jump up on the outside of that wall and dangle from the top of it, slowly pulling down the barrier simply by never dropping off.
The girl on the inside has been growing up too. She’s been putting herself through training trying to prepare for the day there’s a hole in the wall big enough to walk through. It’s almost there. She’s nearly visible when I examine the brickwork that’s looking more and more latticed as 2015 continues. I’ve been pushing and pulling myself out from behind the wall more and more. These have been some of the scariest months I’ve ever lived, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
