Cosmos of Kate

Anyone who knows me well, knows that Tom Petty is one of my childhood heroes. His music was the soundtrack to the majority of my formative years, and remains some of the most important music in my life to date.

His song ‘Won’t Back Down’ is the theme song of my life, representing the core of who I feel I am.. a strong, feisty, stubborn woman with wildfire in her veins that refuses to let anything touch her. But being that woman requires something another of his songs speaks to. Walls.

“All around your island, there’s a barricade, it keeps out the danger, yet holds in the pain. Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you cry, half of me is ocean, half of me is sky. But you’ve got a heart so big, it could crush this town, and I can’t hold out forever… even walls fall down.”

As children, we don’t typically understand the value of building walls around ourselves, or the potential harms of it. It’s not until we’re teens and adults that we start building walls to protect ourselves, but it’s not until even later that we begin understanding the effects those walls have on us, and those around us.

A symptom of building numerous walls is ultra independence. The refusal, and eventual inability, to rely on anyone other than yourself for anything you might need. It wasn’t until well after I had begun doing this that I learned in therapy, ultra independence is also a symptom of trauma.

What I feel many people don’t yet understand and accept, is that trauma comes in MANY different forms. It’s not just from fighting in a war, being abused, watching a loved one die traumatically in front of you, etc. Trauma can come from seemingly harmless places, and can be inflicted by others without them even realizing or intending it. In other words, trauma is extremely subjective. Only we can understand the depth of how something affects us, and the toll it takes on our mental and emotional well-being.

Ultra independence, and building walls, may be symptoms of trauma, but they also act as barriers to future trauma. They serve a purpose, and therefore I feel that while they may be seen as negative to outsiders who can’t breach the walls, they are essential to the self.

Working for nearly a decade as a burn nurse, I found myself putting up many walls. Being in the field of nursing in general comes with a subset of basic walls that must be erected in order to preserve both the heart and the mind, but working in a burn unit comes with even more necessary walls in order to do it effectively, especially for an extended period of time.

Shortly after my time as a burn nurse I also experienced severe mental and emotional trauma in my personal life. This required me to put up even more walls, thicker ones to protect my heart and mind from future assaults. I developed severe ultra independence, beginning to even refuse help from family and loved ones when it was offered due to never wanting even the potential to feel that form of hurt again.

This walled off space within oneself feels essential, but is also a very lonely space in which to live indefinitely. The first step to starting the demolition phase of said walls, at least for me, was therapy. Opening up to someone who was not in my direct circle, who had the knowledge and tools to help me begin the demo process, was essential. It’s taken A LOT of work to even want to pick up the sledgehammer and crack into the barricade that has been protecting me all these years, but doing so is an essential part of beginning the healing process. As the lyrics in Tom Petty’s song state “all around your island, there’s a barricade, it keeps out the danger, yet holds in the pain.” In my experience, this is an undeniable truth of building walls.

The trouble I have found with starting to break down the walls I so lovingly crafted for myself, is that the part of me I’ve been keeping locked away is even more raw and vulnerable to harm than it was before I erected the walls. There’s nothing easy about opening yourself back up to the potential threats the world wants to throw at you, but what I have also come to realize is that being alone in a castle surrounded by impenetrable walls inflicts its own form of trauma. My loving, caring, achingly huge heart was slowly wasting away within its own confines. Humans are made to interact with one another, to love, to care, to cry and to hurt.. together.

As with everything in my life, I like to find happy mediums. I used to wear my heart on my sleeve, unprotected where it could easily be taken advantage of and assaulted. Then I walled it off completely where no one but me had access to it, for fear that it would be attacked again. Now however, I still have my walls, and they still stand strong, but I have created doorway within them that I can easily exit and enter as needed. Only I hold the key to this door, to let myself come and go as I please, and to finally let others into my sanctuary when I deem them worthy.

The essential piece of this stage of emotional and mental transformation is knowing when to revoke access to those I have let in. That is still a work in progress, and likely will be for a long time. As it stands, I’m just beginning the process of determining when to wall myself off again, and when to continue letting others share my space, and it’s not an easy task. It’s messy, uncomfortable, even painful at times, but I feel better knowing that whatever happens, I have a space I have built for myself, by myself, with only my own protection in mind where I can come to regroup and heal when needed, and not return to the world again until I am ready.