Walls

And in this large, hollow house, rooms are too spacious for the four broken residents. Each in his own room, each hiding behind their walls, each unwilling to admit the one thing that would make them feel love again, is each other. Separated by walls, each fantasizing about another person, each creating their own utopia. The walls that separate them is the one thing that keeps them together, however, not happily. At some point, the husband and wife were connected, loving, with rooms together, closets together, and had kids together. A sincere couple, together. Now they are only husband and wife, no longer whole. Only classified as husband and wife through law. The heart house and the hell house. Both two parents, both two kids, both hard working. One little, poor and unified. One large, rich, and shattered. The difference between the two is heartbreaking. What happened to the hell house? What made the marriage go south? What hurt them so bad that they turned on themselves and their kids? It's not my problem to solve, but I want to. The broken woman fantasizing about someone else as her husband sleeps beside her, separated by a wall. A broken man that thinks about his wife in his dream, not as herself, but as a customized version of something he wished she would be. Their sons, exposed to things I wish no one would ever have to know. Not violence. Worse. Their youngest, at 7 years old, obsessed with what he cannot have, it breaks him, but still, his mom slowly keeps taking everything he has. At 7 years old, he opens his mother's bedroom door, he witnesses the unimaginable, and to me, he speaks as if it's nothing. He speaks as if it's funny. I often find myself wishing to go home, just to realize, I am already there. But what are you supposed to think if you’ve never had a home at all?

The Hell House stands where it always has, with walls that are too thick to hear through and doors that do not open without a fight. It is not a house, not really, not in the way home is supposed to be. It is not something warm. It is a structure. A thing that stands because it has to, because it was built once and never torn down. It does not know how to fall. Inside, the wife fantasizes. She leans her head against the window, watches the sky and imagines herself somewhere else, anywhere else, anywhere that is not here. She is soft-spoken, not because she has nothing to say, but because she has learned, over time, that speaking is a waste of breath. She lets her mind build places out of possibilities, out of what ifs and almosts and lives she will never live. She lets herself disappear into the places she invents. It is better that way. It is easier.

The husband dreams. Not of the life, not of the house, not of anything real. He dreams of a world that does not exist, a world that has never existed, a world where he is something more than he is. He does not see the wife at the window. He does not see the walls, the way they close in like a beast with its teeth bared. He only sees what he wants to see. He only feels what does not ask him to feel too much. The walls of the Hell House are painted with silence. It drips down in thick, invisible coats, sealing everyone inside. There is no love here, only the performance of it. Only the memory of what it should have been. The wife pretends. The husband forgets. The walls do not move. The doors do not open. The house does not fall. It should fall, but it does not.

The Heart House is a place I have never lived, but I have seen it. I have stood outside its windows and watched the way light fills the rooms, the way warmth seems to settle into the walls like it belongs there. The people inside speak, and they are heard. They touch, and they are held. They exist, and it is enough.

I wish I could be there. I wish I could slip through the door and let the warmth cling to my skin, let it soak into the parts of me that have only ever known cold. But I cannot. Because I come from the Hell House. And when you grow up in a place like that, you start to believe that warmth is something meant for other people. That light is something you can see but never step into.

There is a family I know, and sometimes, when I watch them, I think of my own. I see the way the mother reaches out, not just to speak, but to hold, to soothe, to love. I see the way the father listens, really listens, not just to respond but to understand. And I think of my home. The closed doors. The walls that do nothing but echo. The silence that stretches between us, thick as cement.

I think of the nights I have spent alone, listening to footsteps in the hallway, holding my breath as if making a sound would make everything worse. I think of the days when words have felt like weapons, sharp and fast and unavoidable. I think of the way love, in my house, is something quiet and distant, something you have to search for in the cracks instead of something given freely.

The Hell House does not fall. That is what makes it worse. It does not rage, does not break apart in some fiery explosion of anger and chaos. It simply stands, forever, heavy with the weight of everything unspoken. I carry that weight. I feel it in the way I flinch at voices raised too loud, in the way I hesitate before speaking, in the way I sometimes feel like I am outside of my own life, watching it happen without truly living in it. Yet, I still press my hands against the windows of the Heart House. I still watch, still wonder, still hope. Maybe one day, I will step inside. Maybe one day, I will belong there. But for now, I am here. In the house that does not love me back. In the house that does not fall.

There are two houses. The Heart House is warm. It is filled with golden light that spills onto the floors, shifting as the hours pass. It smells like something sweet, like vanilla and cinnamon, something gentle. The walls are soft, not just in color but in feeling, like if you pressed your hand against them, they would give just slightly, cradling your touch. The family inside speaks to one another in voices that rise and fall like a lullaby, threading through the space like something alive.

The Hell House is not warm. It stands in the same golden light, but it does not let it in. The walls are cold, like stone, like something that has never known softness. The voices inside do not lull or cradle or soothe. They bite. They dig. They echo down hallways, twisting around corners, slipping under doors.

The wife in the Hell House stands at the window, pressing her forehead against the glass. She thinks of places she has never been, people she has never touched, lives she has never lived. She does not notice the way her fingers grip the windowsill too tight, or the way her husband stares into nothing, dreaming of things he has lost. They do not turn to each other. They do not reach. They exist, side by side, without ever touching. It reminds me of home.

I wish I belonged in the Heart House. I wish I knew what it felt like to rest in a place that did not feel like it was pressing in on me from all sides. A place where I was not walking on eggshells, where love was given without consequence.

Instead, I grew up in a house where love came with conditions, where warmth was something I watched through a window rather than something I felt. I was not taught softness. I was not taught care. The things that other people seemed to learn so naturally, how to style their hair, how to pick out makeup, how to look at themselves in the mirror and see something beautiful. Things I was left to figure out alone.

I think, sometimes, that I have spent my whole life trying to rewrite myself. To shift the way the world sees me, the way I see myself. There was a time when my hands only held sharp things. When my walls were covered in terrible sketches of things I could not say out loud. When my voice did not carry, because I did not let it.

Slowly, my hands changed. I filled them with softer things, better things. Music sheets, microphones, books, and pencils. I started painting my own color onto the walls, changing the shape of my space, even if I could not change the foundation it was built on. However, the past lingers. It does not let go so easily.

I still find myself standing at the threshold of the Hell House, even as I reach for the Heart House. I still hear the echoes of the voices in my house when I am in a quiet room. I still remember the way it felt to sit at a table, stripped of everything that was mine, listening to stories that were too heavy for me to carry. I still dream about walking through the doors of the Heart House, letting its golden light wrap around me, warm, safe, and soft. The Hell House does not fall, and I am still here.

There are two houses. The Heart House, with warm walls and soft light spilling from its windows. The place where love is easy, where laughter curls through hallways like the scent of fresh bread. Where the mother hums while brushing her daughter’s hair, where the father leans in to hear about her day, where the walls are thick with memories that do not burn.

Then there is the Hell House. The house that does not fall. The house where love is something distant, something that happens elsewhere, something that lingers just out of reach like the echo of a song you can’t remember the name of. In the Hell House, the wife fantasizes, lost in a world that does not exist, drowning in the life she wishes she had. The husband dreams, staring at a future that will never come, silent and cold in the way that men are when they do not know how to love.

The walls in the Hell House are too thin. Voices slip through them like whispers through cracks, arguments bleeding into every room, lingering long after the people have gone. The air is heavy here, thick with words left unsaid and the kind that should never have been spoken at all. The floor creaks under the weight of it, the door slams even when no one is touching it, and no matter how many windows you open, it never quite smells like home. I know this house.

I know it in the way I know the lines on my palms, in the way I know the exact amount of pressure it takes to bruise. I know the way the air shifts before voices rise, the way silence feels sharper than shouting, the way love can turn to obligation and obligation to nothing at all. I know the way the walls watch you, the way they whisper back, the way they hold onto things you wish they would forget. I know the Hell House because I have lived in it. Because I live in it still. I want to be in the Heart House.

I have seen it before, glimpsed it through open doors, watched its warmth flicker through the windows of other people’s lives. I have sat in its rooms for brief moments, felt its light on my skin, let it seep into the spaces inside me that have never known warmth. yet, I do not belong there. Because when I step inside, I carry the Hell House with me.

It clings to me, seeps into my skin, curls under my fingernails. I sit in the warmth, but I do not know how to let it in. I do not know how to believe in it, how to trust that it will not disappear, how to exist in a place where love is given freely instead of something you must earn. I do not know how to let love be easy. I do not know how to be soft. But I wish I did.

If you could see me, I think you would be surprised. I think you would expect the Hell House to be obvious, for it to leave marks on my skin the way it has on my mind. it doesn’t. I have learned how to carry it quietly, how to tuck it beneath my oversized hoodies and under the weight of a guitar strap. How to let it slip between the pages of my sketchbooks, how to drown it out with music, how to press it into the worn soles of my sneakers.

If you could see me years ago, though, I think you would have recognized it. You would have seen it in the way my hands shook when I picked at my skin, in the way my sleeves were always too long, in the way my hair was always tied back, as if I was trying to disappear. You would have seen it in the journal pages I tore out, in the sketchbook filled with things I never said, in the silence that was never just silence.

Slowly, I am learning to set it down. Slowly, I am learning how to move toward the Heart House, even if I don’t know how to stay. Maybe one day, I will step inside and know that I belong. Maybe one day, I will press my hands to its walls and feel them hold me back. for now, I stand at the threshold, my shadow stretching behind me, the Hell House looming in the distance. For now, I am still learning.

for now, I am still learning. Still learning how to walk forward without flinching. Still learning that warmth is not something I have to earn. That love is not something I have to prove myself worthy of. That maybe I do not have to apologize for the space I take up in this world.

I am still learning that the past does not let go easily. That the Hell House does not disappear just because you leave it. It stays inside you, in the way your shoulders tense when someone raises their voice, in the way you brace for impact even when no one is aiming for you. It lingers in the way you second-guess kindness, in the way you pull away before you can be pushed. I hate that.

I hate that I am still waiting for something to go wrong when things are right. That I am still carrying the weight of words that were never mine to hold. That I still find myself gripping the past with bloodless fingers, as if letting go would leave me empty. maybe I am afraid of the quiet.

Maybe I have lived so long in the noise that silence feels unnatural. Maybe I have spent so much time waiting for the next storm that I do not know how to stand in the sun. Maybe I do not know how to be anything but prepared for the worst. I think if I had grown up in the Heart House, I would be different.

I think I would know softness like I know the back of my hand. I think I would not be afraid of love. I think I would have learned how to let someone braid my hair without flinching, how to let someone hold my hand without pulling away, how to let someone care for me without the instinct to run. But I did not grow up in the Heart House.

I grew up in the Hell House, where love was an obligation, where words were weapons, where apologies never meant change. Where I learned to be quiet when I wanted to scream, where I learned to disappear in plain sight, where I learned that sometimes the worst kind of loneliness is the one you feel in a house full of people. I think that is why I collect things now.

Guitars and paintbrushes, books and sheet music, pens and fidget toys and sneakers that let me move faster when I need to. I collect things I can hold, things that fill my hands, things that remind me that I exist. I keep my hair loose some days, let it frizz and fall around my face, let it be messy because I was not taught how to keep it any other way. Even as I look the way I do, I am learning that I do not have to be perfect to be enough.

Still, I wonder. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in the Heart House. I wonder who I would be if my mother had taught me how to style my hair instead of leaving me to figure it out on my own. If my father had spoken in warmth instead of cold. If love had been something I knew how to trust instead of something I spent my life fearing.

I wonder if, in some other version of my life, I would be the kind of person who feels at home in herself. But I am not that girl. Not yet. Instead, I am the girl who learned to survive first and live second. The girl who knows how to take care of everyone but herself. The girl who has spent years unlearning things she should have never had to learn in the first place. yet, despite it all, I am still here. Despite it all, I am still trying.

Because if the Hell House has taught me anything, it is that I do not want to be like it. I do not want to be the walls that trap people inside. I do not want to be the silence that suffocates. I do not want to be the kind of love that leaves bruises even when it is gentle. I want to be the warmth. I want to be the open door. I want to be the light that spills from the windows. Maybe, one day, I will build the Heart House for myself.

There are two houses. The Heart House, where love is gentle, where hands are soft, where the walls are thick enough to keep the warmth in. The place where the mother sings while brushing her daughter’s hair, where the father listens with eyes that see, where the home itself breathes with love.

Then there is the Hell House. The house that does not fall. The house where the wife fantasizes about a life that is not hers. Where she moves through the kitchen in silence, hands busy, mind elsewhere, staring at the reflection of herself in the window and wondering who she could have been. Where the husband dreams, always looking forward, always waiting for a future that will never arrive, sitting at the table with his body present but his mind a thousand miles away. The house where they sleep in the same bed but do not touch, where their love is a memory instead of something alive. The Hell House does not break, but it does not heal either. And I have lived in it.

I have felt its walls press in around me, have watched its silence settle into the spaces between people, have learned how to exist in its shadows without making a sound. I have carried it with me in ways I wish I didn’t. In the way I hesitate before accepting kindness. In the way I brace for an apology that does not come. In the way I step into warmth but do not trust it to last. But I do not want to live in the Hell House forever.

I do not want to be made of its walls, do not want its silence to become my own, do not want to spend my life fantasizing or dreaming about something different instead of reaching for it with my own hands. Because I have seen the Heart House, and I want to be inside it. Not as a visitor. Not as someone pressing my hands against the glass, looking in from the outside.

I want to build it. I want to fill its rooms with music and laughter and warmth that stays. I want to love in a way that is steady and certain, in a way that does not feel like it could disappear at any moment. I want to stand in a home that I have made with my own hands and know that I will never be a prisoner inside it.

So I will take the Hell House apart. Not all at once, and not easily. But piece by piece, brick by brick. I will learn how to open the windows. I will learn how to soften the walls. I will learn how to live without waiting for the next storm. Because I refuse to be another ghost wandering its halls. Because I refuse to spend my life trapped in something that does not love me back. Because I refuse to let the Hell House win.

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