What is your perfect fantasy? Is it falling in love? Becoming everything you wished to be? Is it being in some land or space at peace? Maybe it’s just a moment, so perfect that nothing else could ever come close to what it gives you. Perhaps, it’s all these things at once. I suppose, realistically, the perfect fantasy is more about a feeling than any mental image or language we give it; internally, it’s felt and we know it by how it touches us, rather than how we touch it.

Lately, I sit and think about this; what is it I’m chasing? I try to visualize it, but it doesn’t show me. It being some answer that I suppose I wait for; knowing this isn’t the movies doesn’t abate me from pretending or wishing it was all a fairy-tale. I think, mostly, whatever it is I ache for – it tends to ends in a stare down. Both it and I, speechless and powerless to agree on anything.

I like to think that our perfect fantasy isn’t necessarily something ultimate or grand in design; it’s that thing we chase. And when we lose it, everything seems to close in and feel hopeless. Almost empty, with nothing to move towards. It doesn’t franchise with happiness; it’s not about happy or content. It’s the days and nights when you stare ahead and long for this…something.

I have to wonder if that robotic self is part of the process or a result of expectations – are we not communicating because we can’t understand it or because we refuse to hear it? Quite possibly, the easiest thing to ignore in any given situation is exactly that; ourselves.

That wall is something magnificent, too. It doesn’t budge, does it? And how is it possible we can want to break it down so badly, but still cannot defeat it? Maybe, that wall is impenetrable because we built it; it’s everything we crafted in an effort to protect ourselves.

Take a moment and think about everything you fear on an internal level, bundle them together and feel how they feel. After, look at the wall that you feel blocked by and how that feels. I think what we are able to begin to see is exactly why we can’t communicate with it, and why we cannot surpass its barrier. How do you defeat yourself?

We could call our wall like that of a hurt child; it’s hurt and bundled up, but not lost to us. You see, we can’t just get those answers or break it down because it doesn’t understand rationality; it’s pain and it’s determined to not be felt again. Like tension that creeps in your body and locks up; a seized display of what we’ve taken in and held deep down, not always conscious of it burrowing but you feel the effects of it after.

Maybe it’s a little of everything, too; not just pain. There is fear to contend with, as well. When I think with sincerity, I realize I fear almost everything so much that I never let anything in that isn’t controlled by me. I stopped caring and labeled everything a waste of my time, predictable or pointless. I love to walk away from people, give them reasons to leave me, even. That is honest. I lack an ability to need anyone. Yet I love and thrive surrounded by the same thing; people. I’m in love with humanity. When someone needs something, I will be the first to volunteer. I sacrifice myself and time daily for people I love, which extends the same to strangers. It comes naturally, without thought or fear of it. That wall is everything I love and hate; it makes no sense yet here we are. Maybe your wall is built differently and with different reasons, but, much like my wall, it was built to protect yourself. It had intent. And like tension that roots inside your body, you eventually begin to feel the effects of it.

We chase exactly what we block; for me, the ability to need someone. It’s no wonder, than, how it becomes conflicting to name or confront; it’s the one thing we’ve intentionally ignored in effort to disregard it. And the ability to finally label it doesn’t change its feeling or power, but it does give some peace. It gives it a face, and maybe some reconciliation towards the purpose and conflict between its relationship with ourselves.

I suppose now is the moment where most would say, “Take the wall down!” And it is now in this moment why I am going to tell you it’s complete bull shit. Don’t listen to rubbish. You haven’t survived your life up until this point to be told that your fears mean absolutely nothing, and I find it incredibly obnoxious to disregard what you know and how to protect yourself. No. You own you, and you own that beautiful mess. You can’t just…take down fear and pain with some psycho-emotional linguistics; it doesn’t resolve that way, it only colors it differently.

Yet we find ourselves facing a wall and chasing exactly what we put the wall up for; it’s complete nonsense, yet so human. And the truth speaks so loudly here – just because we fear something or experienced pain in these choices, it doesn’t change the fact that we still yearn for those same things. We’re just scared now and weary; sometimes, those same things we run from damn near killed us. But they were things we were willing to die for in that moment, and that is something we need to remember.

The first step isn’t an epiphany or this completeness in healing, it’s remembering a cost we were willing to sacrifice. It reminds us of who we are, outside that shell we crafted, before reality taught us the true depth of that sentiment. Who were you? What were you chasing? What are you chasing? Does the perfect fantasy ever really leave us?

Where do we go from here? Maybe, we do something crazy and let the wall be. We don’t have to give up what we learned, we don’t need to disagree with that wall. Possibly, that’s why it fights us so hard when we try to – it doesn’t want to be forgotten, and in our attempt to “heal,” we do so by trying to remove it. As if it were a tumor or an ugly addition to our collective soul. It’s not, though. It just wants to protect us, even if it means defeating us as we attempt to get past it.

And much like a child, we need to assure it that we understand those truths it speaks but those truths do not have to create a false new self. Let it remember your fantasy before the pains that came, and remind it there will be new pains despite all our effort to avoid them. But this time, we don’t need to be scared because we’re prepared to accept them. At times, we may need to be the wall to our wall also; we may need to force ourselves into a situation and remind the avoidance when it creeps in that this is what we want, and we need not be scared.

Does it all sound melodramatic? These energies we call emotions, our brains – it is us who communicates with it. Our cognition is in a relationship with that inner self, an inner self that we helped shape in agreeance with. And no matter how much we attempt to fight that bond, there has to be respect given to it. Our physical self feels and responds, not always on our own terms because we ourselves cannot always rationalize or justify the experiences. It becomes a matter of body over mind in some ways; have you tried jumping from a high area? Say, into water. You know you will survive the jump, you watch others jump but when you try – your body locks up. You try again, and again your legs freeze. It’s a similar concept here, and one where our emotional mess is not as easy to just shove forward past it.

Instead of saying “I need,” knowing need is going to be rejected given you really do not need, say “I want.” Now you are negotiating and not giving up what you’ve learned. There is a difference in formatting with your mind, and coding something that speaks with truth and intention. It gives more ease because you aren’t disregarding all the truths laid out up until this point. I want this, but not at this cost as I’ve learned why I cannot sacrifice or give up my standards to have that want. Need doesn’t adjust; it is desperate. And we are not desperate; just hurt. I wouldn’t need to jump – I could very well climb back down and call it a day. But, I want to jump in that water and I’m going to despite my body fighting me otherwise. I do not need some of my desires as I’m alive and well without, safe. But, I want those desires to certain degrees because they add to my life and experiences.

I think our perfect fantasies never leave us;internally, that something yearns to be received and experienced. The bridge back to it doesn’t have to be torn down and destroyed, rather revisited and appreciated for its perseverance – it never broke, we just put up a road block. Maybe, it’s time to survey the damage and refortify the bonds that hold it; if we cannot cross our own bridge, how will we ever get past ourselves to really find ourselves?