The Boy Behind The Wall

Author Unknown

My friend wrote this sad love story when she was going through a break up. She was a firm believer in love but luck did not shine brightly on her. It is difficult to find true love and after even just one heart break, it is so easy to just close yourself up.Perhaps by the end of the story, you might think about which would be a better choice. To turn a deaf year to the little boy, or to listen.

Emotions are a dangerous thing. They're like little children, innocent and naive. And when we're in love for the first time, they run wild like children in the park on a Sunday afternoon, full of energy and vigor, boundless and unrestrained.

But if a little girl was to fall, a bad fall, no one sees this poor girl. She looks up at the other children and hears their laughter. She cries as all little girls do but she stops after awhile, not wanting to dampen the other children’s' happiness. So she sits and waits, hoping for someone to help her up.

A boy came and offered his hand; she began to smile as the sadness of a child never lasts long. She takes his hand and they take a few tentative steps, but as she began to put her weight on him the boy let go and she crumpled onto the grass again. The boy laughed, for he was only a bully.

The little girl was sad, but somewhere inside her she knew it was too good to be true and shrugged it off. She rested for awhile, then limped painfully towards a tree and sat in the shade. She’s tired now and her leg hurts too much, she doesn’t want to run around in the park anymore.

The day went on and although she was still hurting, she no longer cried, just rested and waited for the pain in her leg to subside. Indeed after awhile she feels much better. She thinks she’s completely recovered. She stands up but as she tried to take a few steps on her own she crumpled like a rag doll. The little girl realizes her leg is broken. So she sits under the tree and watches the other children play. She saw some of them trip and fall and remembers her own pain. She thinks to herself, "how dangerous it is to run around the park without control or restrain...” She decides to build a wall around herself. She never wants to get hurt again.

She sits in her brick wall alone with her thoughts. She wonders when she'll dare to run again, from time to time she would sit on the wall and swing her legs, trying to enjoy herself and contemplating whether she had the courage to run again. Some children came along to encourage her but each time she came close to jumping off the wall back into the playground, the memory of her fall would return and she would retreat to the inner sanctity of her tiny fortress.

So there she hid, till one day she heard some scraping noises, as if someone else was building a wall. She peered over her wall and true enough there was a little boy, building his own wall, sadness in his eyes. She wondered if he had fallen just like her, while he was running careless and free. She watches the boy complete the wall and when he did so, he peered curiously at her before disappearing behind his own wall. The little girl wondered what the boy was thinking and one day the boy called out to her from behind his wall and she replies from behind her wall.

They begin to talk, in small muffled voices at first, and then clearer, as each of them removed a brick from their respective walls. Soon they became friends, and his voice was a comfort to her. But each time she removed a new brick, the light which flooded her hiding place frightened her and she was tempted to replace it. But also, with each new brick she removed, the sounds of the other children’s laughter enticed her and she realized she wanted to run like before. But not alone lest she fall again. She wondered if the boy felt the same and thought about what she would do if the boy asked her to run with him. Again.