There was a hole in your wall. You stared at it as you lay on your side, covered by a measly blanket on a bed in a messy room, breathing hard as you tried to force yourself to sleep off the pain in your stomach. You could still taste the acid of bile on your tongue. It wasn’t even six o’clock at night and it only looked like five, the long days of the coming summer months burning through your windows, but the hours of shaking with both chills and a feverish heat had taken all the fight out of you.

Staring at the flaw on the pale surface of the looming divide, between you and what lay beyond, calmed you – focusing on that tiny crack that reminded you of home. It was so much harder when you were on your own. You always got homesick when you were ill.

It’d been there for as long as you could remember. Even though you told mum and dad, they didn’t believe you when you said that there were monsters inside the hole in your wall. They weren’t there at night when the claws reached out from the unending void and gripped at the edges of your reality, demons stretching their limbs into your world. Strange how the room we always thought was the safest became the home of our nightmares in the dark. Even the shadows cast over a too small nightgown thrown over a desk chair became beasts ready to drag us from our beds. You would throw off the blanket and run as fast as small legs could take you down the hall to seek refuge in your parent’s bedroom. You would crawl between them half-whimpering and wake to the bright light of morning, your limbs tangled into the sheet, and the monsters left no trace of their visit. But the hole was still there. One night, scaled hands wrapped around your leg and began to pull you towards the abyss as your mother, father, and brother twisted into frightening contortions – you woke up screaming and your mother came running.

There was a hole in your wall. You ripped the masking tape off of it, the shield that had protected you from what lay beyond since your mother had placed it there, and stared directly at it. You were a warrior. You wanted to prove to the world that you knew that you were brave, that you were older now. The aches in your bones were frustrating, but mother called them growing pains, and you were so proud to be getting taller. Every week you’d insist on being measured on the wall, eager eyes absorbing every millimetre of change. You stayed awake at night, just for a bit, wary eyes on the tiny, ragged portal in your room – confidently assuring yourself that the monsters wouldn’t dare come back for you now. You still had nightmares, we always will still have nightmares, but you woke to the knowledge that they weren’t true even if your heart raced. You had won the battle.

There was a hole in your wall. It became a thing of wonder. You would trace your fingers over it and hope it lead to far off realms like in all those books mother read to you – and you so often would pretend it did. You lost yourself in kingdoms where you ruled, seeking adventure – your hand drawing out stories in bright colours on the fresh paper of the new sketch book your parents got you, the simple scribbles of a child who drew her stars like rockets. The daydreams would drift away on the warmth of a mug of hot chocolate and the scent of butter melting over fresh toast – and you sprinted towards the kitchen with your drawing clutched between fingers. Your parents beamed at you proudly as they stuck your masterpiece on the fridge and you glowed with pride. Those visions of beyond the wall clung to you, lingering in your mind as you shared them with your best friend while you sat together and wrote picture books that make no sense but did back then.

You could not be carefree forever. Your parents wore bemused looks on their faces as they told you your teacher’s report was that you ‘spent a lot of time in LaLa-Land’. Your daydreams were better than school. The first taste of growing up had not appealed to you in the slightest, and the fact that you weren’t allowed to run around and play as you had not months ago was shocking to say the least.  You could not help the impulse to doodle on your schoolbooks, and even since it has been almost impossible to fight. But you did not want to disappoint your parents, you hated disappointing them, you hated the sigh that escaped from their mouth every single time your report showed up each year and written down in black print was how you lacked concentration, how you were a bright student but never seemed to be able to focus. Your mind did not piece together sums the way it put together fairy tales or epic adventures you often ran off to. The New Year’s resolution that this year, this year would be different retold every single year as it is for most of us save a lucky few. Your artwork was no longer the thing they stuck to the fridge; the rare distinctions in national tests took its place. You no longer stared at the hole in your wall.

You almost wished for the monsters of your childhood when you learnt of true, irrational fear. Your greatest talent turned against you and closed its fingers around your throat and you felt the ringing in your ears drown out everything else. The very air turned hot and stuffy as you struggled to take off as many layers as you were allowed, cold sweat pouring from your skin. The stomach dropped and your heart jumped to your throat, beating wildly out of control. You could barely breathe. You could not think. All you could hear was your teacher’s voice as she calmly discussed the flow of blood with your fellow classmate. It made you so dizzy that your entire world tilted sideways and all you could do was rest your head on your table and squeeze your eyes tightly shut in the sliver of hope that it would stop. When you finally came to, pale and shaking, all you could see was the ceiling and the concerned face of the girl who sat beside you looking down at you. You didn’t remember falling from your seat. You never knew how long you were out for, just that you felt like crying for those moments you lost afterwards and for feeling so weak. They sent you home for the day, your mother looking concerned as she picked you up from the office. It did not happen just once, you lost count of how many times it had been – but you learnt how to faint without anyone noticing to avoid seeing those stares from your classmates: a mixture of pity and gross curiosity as if you weren’t human any more. As if it’s not hard enough living with the fact that what sends you into an uncontrollable panic is right under your skin and you can’t live without it. Merely thinking about it made the veins in your forearms ache, and if you pushed just that bit too much, the same imagination that sent you off to the stars, dragged you straight to hell. It’s the hole in your wall.

There’s a hole in your wall and you’re older, taller, ‘grown up’. As it caught your attention you realise that the stories that used to haunt you can no longer be summoned to memory. The flaw no longer held that power, but merely the ghosts of childhood fears and wonders – just as you could almost see your younger self, cycling happily in the reflection of the rusted tricycle in the puddle from the rain that fell the night before. How many times you’ve pretended that rainwater was magic as you caught little droplets on your fingertips you don’t remember, but all you could see now was the sky as you looked up and prayed no more would fall on your drive away from this city, this house, this room. There’s something we lose as we’re told to grow up, we’re told we’re too old for fairy tales. You packed up the last of the things you were to take, only the things you need, and pushed all your old drawing books and toys into a box and away into the shadow of an old closet. Your mother walked into the room, seeing you glance again at the wall. “What?” She asked.

“I can’t believe I used to be scared of such a tiny crack.”

She laughed, “I know. You used to come crawling into our room crying about monsters living in your room.”

Maybe they were, you wanted to say. Now I’m terrified of something that keeps me alive, you wanted to say, but instead you just laughed along. It bounced around in the empty corners and you never realised how small the place where’d you slept for so many years had been until then.

It was harder on your own. While at times you felt so strong and ready to take on the world, at other times you felt as though you’d never be ready for anything – like was too unpredictable and you could not prepare for it all. When you were sick you felt weak – when you felt sick, you wanted there to be someone who cared, who wanted to keep you safe and well. On your own there’s only you and the constant worries that you usually ignored. The messy room you now called your own felt so empty – no ghosts, no monsters, just you. So often you opened the door to let the night in, and let is sing to you a song of late night traffic and howling wind. There was a hole in your wall that no one else could see. It was the flaw in the barrier you built around you that could be breached, bringing in more than just beasts from the infinite stretch beyond. One hit too hard could send you tumbling down and breaking across the ground, like water on hard stone. Yet at the same time you cared for it, thought of it often. It was the gap in the wall to which you pressed your ear against in hopes of hearing the sea or the wind as your mind made up the images to match. It was so small; no one would notice it was there unless they were looking, unless you told them.

Isn’t that trust? Telling someone of the hole in your wall and how much it scared it you and how much it meant, all under the hope that they wouldn’t go and make it wider. Isn’t that love?