Tear Down That Wall

04/09/08 General

I was 15 and the album "The Wall" was new to me in 1993. The idea of creating a figurative wall in order to keep oneself protected resonated so significantly within me that I listened to the entire album almost non-stop, hoping to find solace in how someone else had created such a wall, yet all the while secretly hoping for instructions about how to destroy my own. I had only been struggling with diabetes for three years, but the bricks had already been laid and the mortar was beginning to set.
   
I built my psychologically protective barrier roughly one week after being diagnosed. I was on a bus ride for a field trip and the kids around me were talking about their favorite foods. Even one of my teachers chimed in when the conversation turned from dinner entrees to desserts. I felt as though the bus was closing in on me.

They were systematically naming foods that, in my mind, I would never again be allowed to touch. I lost control, pushed the kid in the seat with me into the aisle and opened a window. My teacher reprimanded me, but as he did so, I saw that look of recognition laced with pity cross his face.

He abruptly changed the subject but the impetus was not lost on the boys, who now looked at me in a new light. I understood then, as distinctly as I felt that fresh air on my face, that I needed to keep quiet and keep contained about my diabetes, because not doing so would make me a target.
   
Fast forward to high school and I’m listening to Pink Floyd and now deeper into my despair, because years of keeping others out, in essence, only kept me in. I still had friends, I was even what you’d call popular, but a fundamental side of me was always in hiding. As a consequence, I became hypocritical, judging others for being false, when it was me playing the two-faced identity.

In the back of my mind I knew this was the scenario, but could not admit it, and, therefore, felt a layer of guilt settle heavily upon me. The wall was now set and the line from the song “Mother” haunted me: “…did it need to be so high?”
   
In college and through most of my twenties I remained inside my self-created cell. The first cracks in the foundation, however, did begin to show, when, after college I decided to write a Young Adult novel about an adolescent with type 1 diabetes. The writing became a type of therapy. It allowed me to express, through the protagonist, all that I felt, and still feel about the oppressive, isolating aspect of this illness. Ultimately, we are the ones who feel all that “diabetes” means, and often our communication fails to articulate that essence.
   
Obviously, now I’ve continued with writing as my escape. The life inside of me that I try to hide is finally wriggling free, or at least calling out its intentions. For Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, "The Wall" was his way of communicating his take on self-insulated existence. At the end of the album (The whole album is a story.), he is outside the wall, frail and confused, yet hopeful.

I am still very much inside my own wall, but do manage to slip out every so often through the passages created by my writing. I hope someday to stand outside, free of the trappings, but until then, “All in all it’s just another brick.”

Eric Devine lives in upstate New York where he teaches high school English. He is a regular contributor to My Diabetes Information. This article contains excerpts from and references to his forthcoming book This Side of Normal.