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THE BERLIN WALL
- ARAMINTA MATTHEWS About two months ago, I gave my most valued possession to an individual with whom I intended to spend the rest of my life. It was dark, and we laid naked in my bed. I reached over his long body and plucked the object from the drawer of my night stand. I pressed the jagged rock into his palm, and said, "This is my piece of the Berlin Wall. I want you to have it." Odd that a piece of concrete embedded with stones meant more to me than even my photographs or journals, but I had instilled that concrete with ceremonial significance. To me, it represented the bloodied fingernails of little girls, the strong-armed hammers of men, the wild hair of women who collectively struck down the oppression forced upon them; who rendered stereotypes and dichotomies of a seemingly impossible situation into a veritable pile of rubble. It was given to me by my first significant boyfriend, and it had been passed onto him by his grandmother, a woman native to Berlin. Over the years, I chipped away fragments of the wall and gave the slivers to lovers and friends. There was a girl who was too afraid of her sister's undisclosed opinions to tell anyone of our relationship. There was a boy who left for the Navy with a patriotic chip of paternal obligations to his nation on his shoulder. That chunk of the elements represented the possibility of hope; that even the tiniest of fingers could strip a wall down to bare bones. I gave the whole of my remaining fragment to someone who had a greater wall around him than all of China or even Berlin, and when I pressed it into his grasp, he said non-plussed, "I don't believe this was really a part of the Berlin Wall." Despite my fervent affirmations, he insisted that he did not believe, that it was a hoax my ex-boyfriend had conspired, or just a chunk of his grandmother's foundation. What's more, he even attempted to return this fragment to me unnoticed. When I finally discovered its reappearance in my night stand, I confronted him. I remember feeling rejected, unappreciated: how could anyone, lover, friend, or stranger, so callously cast aside something so important to me? It was not just a rock I had given him, but an emblem of faith, an effort to show him in what high esteem he was held in my eyes. He said simply, "It just doesn't mean anything to me." Regardless, I insisted that he keep the rock, which he still has tucked away in a brown wooden box with two empty glass vials and the lingering scent of marijuana. Shortly after our confrontation, we broke off our relations and found ourselves as a great wall erected itself between our two valleys. With a strained friendship, we tried to bond on other levels, tried to forgive and move on, but the wall only rose higher between us, blocking the sorely-needed sun from the roots of our efforts. It began that we could not speak openly without violent and tear-stricken arguments springing forth. Legions of bullets fired upon hopeless travelers seeking only to cross the border between two new worlds. Whenever I would try to talk through our communication gaps, he would retreat, hide behind the wall of his youth, or demand that such conversations need not take place, that the only way to cure the problem was to ignore it. I am certain Berlin would say that the wall did not come down with ignorance. I see now how much I wanted to "help" him. Drowned by perhaps a foolish love, I thought I had the wisdom and strength to help him strike down his own barriers. Indeed, he never requested it of me; besides I had my own wall to destroy. I needed to see myself, to myself for the whole person I am, and to remember that I like myself even when nobody else is around to say so. Now, I stand triumphant on this dusty pile of refuse, my prized possession is my vision to behold the sky and ocean dipping into one another at sunset, as the burning wheel sizzles into the water. I have no place for walls in the outdoors. |
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