Ripple Effect: Walls

Lots of people have been hitting their coronavirus walls lately.

Somehow this week has been harder for everyone. Walls have gone up. People have been coming up against walls. The walls are falling apart.

I know I hit mine. It has not been easy.

When sitting with a few moms on the beach, six feet apart, wearing masks, we were talking about how somehow this week was a really tough week. 

The end of summer is near. School is starting soon online. No end of this pandemic is in sight. Each one of us is fighting our personal demons with the collective issues closing in all around us.

One of the women shared, “Last night I just sat down on my bed and cried and cried and cried.” To that I added, “I swear, I was driving around feeling so down, I thought to myself this is what depression feels like. You don’t have anything to look forward to. You lose your joy and you are simply sad, sad, sad, sad.”

The conversation was comforting, because everyone is challenged with this pandemic quarantine situation.  One of the moms said that the fact that we don’t know when it’s going to end doesn’t help. It feels like there are walls all around us. “I feel like walls are closing in on us. The pandemic is like these huge jail walls that we can’t get out of.”

I was sitting looking out at the ocean and I drifted away from the conversation.

I remembered one of the first things a young man who was incarcerated said to me when I asked him what freedom looks like to him. He looked at me and said, “People think that freedom is being outside of these walls, but I know when I lean into the wall, that’s where I find my freedom.” I was puzzled. “I don’t think I understand,” I responded gently.

He said, “At night when everyone’s asleep (in this juvenile facility, the youth slept in one big room in beds near each other), I’d sneak off my bed, sit on the floor, and lean against the wall. I lean against the wall, close my eyes and dream. I imagine my future. I think about the things that will be and the wall is where it starts.” He continued, “I lean against the wall, Ms. The wall holds me in, but it also pushes me ahead.”

How poetic I thought to myself. I remember being impressed by his using the wall as his launching point. 

I am not sure what these Corona walls are launching, but I do know that we are going to look back and see the start of many things, even though right now it feels like the end of everything.

Another student told me once that even though she is outside of the walls, the walls are always there, because she is always judged by the fact that she was incarcerated. 

“How can I get people not to see those fucking walls, Ms.?” she asked me.

“Once I tell them I did time, it is over. They put up a wall that is higher than the prison wall. How will I ever get a job?”

“We have to figure out how to climb over that wall,” I told her.

“How do we do that?” she asked me, frustrated. 

“I am not sure,” I answered and paused to think. As I was about to speak, another student jumped in and said, “There are some walls you will not be able to climb, Ms. You need to walk alongside them, feel them, get to know them, and then you will be able to get through them.”

I looked at him. I looked at her. These are people who have spent more time behind walls than my children have been alive, yet they are optimistic.

When they got out of prison, outside the prison walls they were faced with new walls that were higher than the walls that locked them up, yet they didn’t give up and they are desperately trying to move forward. Then a third student chimed in, “There are many kinds of walls in this life. Some high, some low, some tougher than others. The thing is, Ms., you gotta learn to go outside the walls in your mind, and not let them get into your head. Once you learn how to do that, you can beat anything.”

This was a man who spent many years, yes YEARS, in solitary confinement, so he knows what he is talking about.

I am pulled back to the conversation on the beach with a group of beautiful women, a new circle I am getting to know. I really like them and their honesty. 

“This is a lot,” one woman said. 

“Way too much,” the other added. 

I share a little of my work. I say it is ironic that my students who did time and sat in solitary confinement are a source of comfort and wisdom to me. We all laugh and take a collective breath together.

“This is good,” one said. 

“Yes, it feels normal,” the other added. And we all erupt in laughter, since there is absolutely nothing normal about a group of moms sitting distanced from each other, wearing face masks, at the end of July, on the beach on the Pacific Coast Highway.

We will all get through this pandemic, and the crazy walls it brings with it. 

We can and will tackle our walls the best we can.

Some will lean against them. Some will walk alongside them. Some will climb over the walls.

“You know,” I told my student who was having trouble getting a job.

“There are places that employ people that have a record. They are smart, because they can have people like you work for them,” I told her. 

“Seriously, go where they want you. Walk away from the wall and go to the door.”

“You always gotta be a fucking poet, Ms.,” and she laughed. 

“I got you,” she added. “I’ll try.”

There really isn’t a door to the wall of this pandemic.

We need to be patient, and like everything, we must give it the time it needs to be and what it needs to be. We need to do what needs to be done.

My wise students have shown me that the wall is as high as you let it be.

“Don’t let a wall hold you in.” 

I could hear his voice in my head.

I look at the wall in front of me. 

This huge wall that keeps me up at night and takes my joy, and I tell it,

“You aren’t as bad as you are trying to be.” And then I make myself say to it, 

“I can live with you, Wall. I wonder if you can live with me?” 

Suddenly, I understand that I can be the wall, too. Somehow that is comforting.

I hope it is for you as well. 

Remember when looking at the walls of your life, they are also looking back at you.

You have so much more power than you can imagine, even in a global pandemic.