“Remember those walls I built? Well, baby they’re tumbling down.” I rolled my eyes when I first heard this line from Beyonce’s song, “Halo”. I thought it was so cliché to hear the word walls in many other love songs. Until 12 years later, I then realized what the metaphor of walls meant in the many ballads.

The 12 fun, exciting, and tons of heartbreak years led me to build a massive wall. It thickened over the years of learned distrust of dating. I unknowingly was building this. I am scared to say this wall has grown to more than one.

Now that I am dating someone who has the patience of a saint, it took me months into the relationship to realize I surrounded my heart with layers of barricade. The many months of acts of kindness I received from my significant other were slowly being taken apart painfully by him. However, I was again, unknowingly putting each brick back.

“When we break up.”

“When we are no longer together….”

I recall him wincing when I casually start a conversation with disregarding words to his feelings. I thought it was normal for me to talk this way but the reflected mirror of my hurtfulness became aware when close friends shook their heads of disapproval. Some who knew my horrible dating experiences over a decade gasped,

“What’s wrong with you?”

“There is a guy who clearly loves you so much.”

I disgustingly asked myself, What made me this way?

After a while of contemplating about my past very short lived, non-existent relationships, the unkind strangers who only wanted one thing from me taught me to be selfish and get on the bandwagon with other assholes of ghosting. Over a decade of meeting horrible people, I unknowingly was them.

After realizing what I have become, an ice-cold princess ass, I went outside of my lonely castle and picked up a brick. I analyzed it.

In the midst of the act of putting it back, I surprisingly cradled it.

I hugged it. I then muttered,

“Thank you for protecting me over the years. But I no longer need you.”