House Alone: Shared Walls

The Wall Between Us I used to think a house was a place you kept the world out of.Four walls, a roof, a lock on the door, enough silence to hear your own thoughts echo. I built mine brick by brick, word by word, rule by rule. Each brick was a reason: This will protect me. This will make me good. This will keep the chaos out. I lived alone inside it for years.Not lonely, exactly.Just… alone.The way a single candle is alone in a cathedral, proud of its flame, unaware of the dark it can't reach. Then one morning the mortar cracked.Not with thunder. Not with drama.Just a hairline fracture, thin as breath, running from the floor to the ceiling of my mind. Through it came a sound I hadn't invited: Your voice. Your footsteps. Your life on the other side. I pressed my ear to the wall.I expected noise.I heard music. That was the first tremor.The second came when I realized the wall wasn't holding the world out;it was holding me in. This book is the story of what happened next.Not a demolition.A renovation.One brick removed at a time, by hand, by heart, by the slow courage of admitting: *I don't need to live alone to be safe.*I just need to stop building prisons out of protection. The walls are still here.But now they breathe.Now they carry light from your windows into mine.Now they hold up a roof we both stand under. Welcome to the house.The door was never locked.You just had to knock from the inside.