As long as I can remember, I have hated barriers of any kind. In school the authority of a teacher felt like a wall. Gender inequity felt like a wall. Race felt like another wall. I saw the world as a series of walls. Borders. Education. Age. Gender. All those walls were there because people were too afraid of the ocean. And I had to try navigating that ocean. The wall crept up slowly. It started when the ship of my life broke in the middle of the ocean. But I do not regret that it broke because the cracks were already there. The breakage started by being the person people wanted and expected me to be. It started by looking for affirmation instead of trusting in my own individual self. The day that it completely broke was almost a relief, because it meant having no choice but to do the right thing, instead of trying to be someone else.
The way is not a path that takes us from a place to another place. The way appears when we take a stand. Sometimes we have to take difficult stands for so long that we become like lighthouses.
A mound of sand and broken pieces of me, had piled up after the ship wreck. It took time to give it form. My new wall was a wall made of make belief and whimsy. Time passed and the wall became thicker and thicker. While the walls outside me became less and less relevant or rigid, the wall inside me grew. It kept out the debris of the ocean. Taking a stand can be hard, but in time our stands become everyday facts about us.
One day a wall completely encircled me. A ground had formed beneath my feet. One can become the home that one seeks. One can become the space that one wants to inhabit. One can create belonging where none exists. Birds do it all the time. An old button becomes a luxurious armchair for the perfect nest for a bird.
The lighthouse fulfills its purpose not by finding safe harbor itself but by creating space in the middle of the ocean to help others find safe harbor.
The lighthouse arises because of the ocean. Our job is not to avoid the ocean or find easy ways to navigate the storm, but to merely exist as ourselves.
Behind The Veil 