THE WEIGHT OF HER WALLS

Some walls protect you. Some walls slowly become your prison. Weight of her walls explores the silence, pain ,and strength hidden behind them.

It’s like I had seen something in her long before she ever spoke it aloud— A pull. Not the

ordinary kind that comes from charm or beauty or confidence, but a deeper force, the kind that

forms only inside people who have endured more than they ever deserved. She carried a

resilience that didn’t feel learned; it felt carved. Etched by something sharp, something painful,

something that life had forced upon her much too early.

“My dad is a bully,” she said one day, her tone neither dramatic nor self-pitying. It was simply a

fact, delivered with the calmness of someone who has repeated the truth enough times to stop

flinching at it.

“We are trauma children,” she added, and then she smiled.

 A smile practiced over years of having no choice but to survive. You could see the pain hidden

in her smile, a pain she had learned to mask until she believed it was no longer there. But pain

like that doesn’t leave; it simply finds better hiding places.

And as if her father wasn’t enough, she introduced me to her mother’s cruelty with the same

unsettling composure. She narrated, word for word, the awful things her mother had told

her—things no child should hear, especially not from the person meant to be their safest place.

To me, the idea of a mother not loving her child was unfathomable. It felt wrong even to speak it

into existence.

“Maybe you misunderstood her,” I said, trying to convince her, and maybe myself, that a mother

couldn’t be that hurtful. The alternative was too heavy to hold.

But she shook her head. “I remind him of my father,” she said. “I’m a copy of him, in appearance

and mannerism.” And I could see it—not just the resemblance, but the echoes of his sharpness,

the way she sometimes pushed back too hard, too quickly. She was a bully in her own right

sometimes, though not from malice—from inheritance. Some people inherit eye colour; she

inherited survival tactics.

We went back and forth, circling the truth like two people who weren’t sure whether to confront

it or avoid it. Even logic couldn’t save this one.

“She might actually not love you,” I said, joking in the kind of way that’s meant to soften a blow

no one wants to deliver. There was nothing left but acceptance. We both laughed—strangely, but

genuinely—and I pulled her into a hug. It was the only thing left that I could offer, the only thing

soft enough to counter everything hard in her life.

Her ability to be blase was like an automatic flinching when someone brought their hands close

to your face. You could not convince her to care more or show her feelings, and I thought maybe

it was only right to let her drown; maybe if she drowned long enough and survived, then life

would be worth living for her.

Life had never treated her fairly, but she treated life like an opponent she refused to lose to. She

met every hit, every setback, every betrayal with a stubbornness that was almost admirable. She

always found a way through.

She was raised by her maternal grandmother, and for a long time, she believed that was enough.

Her grandmother’s love was quiet but steady—food on the table, clothes mended, birthday cakes

made from scratch. But as she grew older, the world began to point out what she didn’t have.

“Where is your mother?” kids would ask, innocent but piercing.

Even when her mother came to visit her, she could see there was a difference in the way she

treated her and other nieces and nephews who were around their grandma. She got more treats,

more clothes than the other children. But she didn’t think more of it, perhaps she thought it was a

preference thing, that she was more likable.

In her high school years, she was taken to her father’s place and he had already married. Her

grandmother could no longer be able to afford her school fees, and she was left with no choice

but to give out the mantle to her dad. As a teen being yanked from her grandmother’s house

where she had all the freedom, and taken to a house where rules were different was also a rude

awakening. Like life wasn’t hard enough, it had to reawaken something more substantial. In here

she had to do house chores something she had never done before. And this would not have been

a problem if it was her mother, it was just the tone in which she was instructed and the

thoroughness in which she had to do the chores, that made her feel it wasn’t just about learning

to be responsible but there was some animus in there.

Her mother, also remarried, floated in and out of her life in a way that always left the air

uncomfortable. Giving birth as a teenager had robbed her mother of the chance to bond, and

giving custody to the grandmother meant the connection never truly formed. Whenever they

were together, the atmosphere shifted—like a storm cloud drifting into a quiet sky. She often

found herself more at ease with her stepmother, a woman with no biological claim on her but

with more warmth than the one who did. It left her with a strange ache, a mix of guilt and

longing. Was she wrong for not remembering her mother? Wrong for not feeling what she was

supposed to feel?

But the truth is this: you cannot break what is already broken.

Something broken is not fragile; it is resilient. It survives not because it is whole, but because it

has learned to live in pieces.

When she walked into a room, head high, you would never guess her history. She shone like a

sun catcher—reflecting light in directions you wouldn’t expect. There was an internal message in

the way she carried herself: I have endured so that I can live.

I asked her once about her travels, expecting a detailed explanation or maybe a proud story. She

just said, “If you want it bad enough, darling, you could also do it.”

I smiled. “Maybe one day.”

Her joy was fast, fierce, consuming. She seized happiness with both hands, unafraid of the cost.

She lived as if every moment might be taken from her, and so she refused to waste any. Yet that

same fearlessness came with a price—layer upon layer of protective shell, each built from a past

wound. Her softness was buried deep, but it existed. You just had to earn your way toward it, and

she didn’t hand out ladders.

Who am I to say she should be vulnerable? Maybe her walls serve a purpose. Maybe every

friend, every lover, every person who enters her life must climb them if they want the privilege

of knowing what’s inside. She did the work to survive; why should she make it easy for anyone

else?

We interpret life through the landscapes we grew up in—through the storms we weathered, the

homes we lost, the love we didn’t receive. And I hope you, too, do what’s right for you. Carry

the positives, hold them close, but don’t let the negatives wear you down. Let them shape you

without defining you.

Because in the end, resilience is not built by avoiding life. It’s built by living it, despite

everything.

Don't just leave quietly. Share your thoughts with me- i'd love to know how it made you feel.