When I’m at my weakest, I feel so small, so insignificant, and such a drain on other people. As I approach the stronger end of the emotional spectrum, the exact opposite occurs. I feel I need to keep being strong, My emotional defenses get stronger and stronger, like those massive antlers on those ice-age deer. Until, just as with those deer, they become overly massive, and I hit a collapse point. And start out all over again.

I can’t help but feel I might be looking at a pattern there. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, seeing patterns in everything. Therefore, there might be some merit in the observation. I’ve been feeling at the stronger end for a while now, able to face the world, able to play the great game that is life. Equally, I notice my patience with emotion waning. Emotion becomes a burden, and so I rebuild the defences, in the footprints of the old battlements.

I’m having to become conscious of this unconscious drift, in order to attempt to counter it. I don’t want to be so strong I am unbreakable. Because when I am, I wall the enemies up inside the keep with myself, and only the little white flag above the well defended battlements let anyone know there might be a problem inside.

I don’t want to be the strong one. Not this time. When I’m the strong one, the breaking is so much more painful. I want to be able to break down on occasion in front of those I love most. To be able to valve out the anger, the pain, the fear, and all those black demons, which will otherwise be stuck inside the house with me. Sometimes, I want to cry, but I daren’t break down. Sometimes, I want to shout at the world. Sometimes, I want to say what I feel, but then I dismiss it, as being too trite, too idiotic, too teenage.

Sometimes, I just want to curl up and feel safe. For me, before now, safety has been a measure of those defences. when I want to feel safe, I start to build the strong walls. I need to find another image of safety. I need to find some other, less isolationist way to feel safe. And that’s not so easy either.

I don’t want to be the strong one, where every hurtful comment just bounces off my thick hide. I don’t want to bestride the world like some sort of colossus. I need, sometimes, to think of my own feelings in the bigger picture. And that, my friends, is the most difficult thing of all. My emotions have never been bigger picture material, and the stronger I spin, the more they centrifuge out to the edges. I dismiss them as unimportant, angsty, neurotic, unpleasant, unwanted, unwarranted, and impolite. I throw them to the back of the mind, and wall myself up to stop any more getting in.