Breaking Down Walls: Embracing Vulnerability and Growth

What happens when fear stops feeling like a warning and starts feeling like a wall?

By Kristopher Raines

We are all human, trying to survive everyday life—work, rude people, financial stress, internal conflicts, children, and everything else competing for our attention. Somewhere in the middle of it all, we also have to remember to breathe.

Through all of those moments, we carry emotions with us. We can feel happy, irritated, sad, angry, and then happy again, sometimes all in the same day. A lot of it depends on how the day is going, but sometimes it also depends on what we were already carrying inside before the day even started.

For me, one emotion never seems to leave me alone: fear. It shows up as a constant tightness in my chest. Some days, it feels like I cannot breathe, like an invisible hand is wrapped around me and slowly squeezing harder. That is what it feels like to live with fear every day—not occasionally, but as a constant presence.

Remember when I wrote about how much I overthink? Sometimes I can be sitting there, working with my hands, like wiring or doing something that should keep me focused, but the moment my hands start moving, my brain starts turning its gears. Working with my hands can relax me, but it also gives my mind room to think. And when my mind has too much room, it usually takes me somewhere I do not want to go.

Now combine that overthinking with the fear sitting in my chest. Together, they push me back into a corner. Strangely, the corner feels safer because there is nothing behind me. Nothing can sneak up from the back. I can see what is in front of me, watch my surroundings through my peripheral vision, and feel like I know what is coming. I know you can never truly be ready for everything, but fear makes me feel like I have to be. It makes me feel like I always have to defend myself because, deep down, I do not feel safe in this world.

Living with that fear for so long made me build a wall around myself. Not just any wall, either. It felt impossibly high and nearly indestructible. That wall made me feel like I had less to fear. If I stayed quiet and withdrawn, I did not have to explain myself. I could nod and smile when someone passed by, then keep going on my way.

Maybe that made people avoid me. Maybe not on purpose, but I think people could see something on my face. I have what some people might call a resting angry face, even when I am not angry at all. Most of the time, I am just quiet and laid back. Every once in a while, someone approaches me, and my face changes. I do not mind talking to people. Part of me can enjoy it, but another part of me wants the conversation to hurry up so I can be left alone again.

Then my thoughts start attacking the moment. Why is this person talking to me? Are they doing it out of pity? Are they bored? Did they just pick me because I was there? That is how fear twists something simple into something heavy.

A few weeks ago, after having some of the worst panic attacks I have had, I made a difficult choice. I decided I wanted to start tearing down that wall. Creating this website became one of the first bricks I removed. It gave me a place to share my stories, experiences, and fantasy worlds—to let people see parts of me I had spent years hiding.

Honestly, I was tired of fear. Fear has been like my nemesis. It has made me hard on myself. It has kept me hurting, worried, suspicious of people’s intentions, and trapped inside my own head. And I am 40, for goodness’ sake. I want to be out there more. I want people to see the cheerful, happy, big-hearted side of me—the side that wants to make other people feel better and still exists underneath all of this fear.

But tearing down the wall did not magically make the fear disappear. If anything, I felt it even more. Once the wall started coming down, I felt the fear grabbing harder. It made me think more negative thoughts, create too many assumptions, and second-guess almost everything.

Whether it was this blog, writing again, sharing my thoughts, or simply trying to be more open, fear found something negative to say about all of it. It told me people would not read this, or they would hate me, or they would hate my writing, or they would think I was stupid. Then those thoughts got worse and worse.

Still, I kept fighting myself because I knew I had to do this. I had to push through it, even if fear kept sitting there, reminding me why I built that wall in the first place. The wall protected me from feeling so exposed, but it also kept me trapped.

I have been told that fear is my body’s way of protecting me, and maybe that is true. My body learned that kind of protection early. I grew up constantly worried—worried about getting hit, getting yelled at, or what might happen when someone was in a bad mood.

If someone’s mood changed, my body noticed. My mind started asking questions. What is going to happen now? Is their mood going to get worse, and will I become the target? That kind of fear stays with you. It does not just disappear because you are older. It becomes part of the way your body reacts to the world, and I hated it.

Today, I feel out of it. I think part of me forgot what it would feel like to tear down my walls. Now my body is fighting me, trying to protect me from the world the only way it knows how. I feel as though I am standing at the edge of something unfamiliar, trying to keep my balance while my mind urges me to retreat.

Right now, I am spiraling a little. I keep wondering how long it will take before I can finally breathe, move forward, and enjoy the freedom of not having that wall around me all the time. But the truth is, I do not know. Maybe none of us really know how long healing is supposed to take.

I just want to have more chill days without fear lurking around. I’m tired of feeling like my body needs to be on guard against everyone and everything. Plus, I really want to stop living like something bad is always about to happen.

Because it is exhausting. More than anything, I want to breathe without fear squeezing my chest. I am not there yet, but every honest word I share is another piece of that wall coming down.

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