I have this friend, a guy, who I sometimes think may have a chip implanted in my brain.

He has this way of admitting something, a secret about him that happens to be my secret at that time. He tells his secret to me and at the end, he pauses and he says, "...and I...I have a feeling that you do that sometimes too." I can't tell you how unnerving it was the first time he did that to me. Now it makes me smile, because I've never had anyone know this much about me or what makes me tick.

With someone else, it might make me uncomfortable to be tagged like this, but this friend is so nonjudgemental that it's borderline nice to share a secret. I really haven't done that a lot in my life. I keep a lot of secrets, my own and others.

And so I begin to open up a little more, trust new people. I have a realization about men almost everyday anymore. I'm just starting to *get* them. I feel like a teenager all over again - I guess I fell like I'm falling back to just past the point in my life when I began to build my wall.

It took a lot of time and energy to build that wall - it certainly didn't happen over night. It was also constant work, after the wall was built, to maintain the structure and consistently numb myself into forgetting that I lived behind it.

I hope that it won't take quite as long to tear it down.

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