THIRTY-THREE
Fair warning. This one’s different. No taco rankings. No beach etiquette violations. Just me, being more honest than I’m comfortable with. Regular programming resumes next week. Probably.
I’ve been thinking about walls lately.
Not the literal kind, though I do share one with my neighbor, and let me tell you, the acoustics in a 1970s duplex leave nothing to the imagination. I can hear my neighbor singing in the shower. Mostly flat on the high notes.
No, I mean the other kind. The invisible ones. The ones we build without realizing we’re doing it, and then wake up one day surrounded by them, wondering why we feel so alone.
I’m an expert wall-builder. I have been my whole life.
I built walls around my sexuality, kept it hidden for years, told myself it was nobody’s business, convinced myself that “private” and “ashamed” were the same thing.
I built walls around my grief—my mom died two years ago, and for a long time I couldn’t even say that sentence without changing the subject immediately after. Like if I kept moving fast enough, the sadness couldn’t catch me.
I built walls around what I wanted, who I wanted, what kind of life I dreamed about when I let myself dream. Easier not to want things. Wanting things means risking not getting them.
Walls don’t protect you. They give you the illusion of safety while slowly cutting off your oxygen.
The truly terrifying thing isn’t letting people in. It’s realizing how much time you wasted keeping them out.
I moved to California thinking I was running away from something. Turns out I was running toward home. I just didn’t know it yet.
There’s a concept in architecture called “threshold space”—the in-between areas.
Doorways. Porches. The space where inside meets outside.
These spaces are designed to help you transition, to prepare you for what comes next.
They’re not meant to be lived in permanently. They’re meant to be passed through.
I think I’ve been living in threshold space for most of my adult life. One foot in, one foot out. Ready to leave at any moment. Never fully committing to being anywhere, with anyone.
But lately, I’ve been thinking about what it might mean to step through. To stop hovering in doorways and be…somewhere. Be with someone. Let myself be known.
It’s also, I’m starting to realize, the whole point.
Honestly? San Diego is a weekly newsletter about building a life in a place you didn’t plan to love. Subscribe if you want more overthinking and occasional emotional breakthroughs.
Next week: I signed up for a cooking class. I don’t expect it to go well.
Kieran read it back five times.
It was more personal than anything he’d written before. More exposed. The Black’s Beach piece had been funny, self-deprecating humor as armor. This was different.
He hit publish before he could talk himself out of it. Then he closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, and exhaled.
A knock at the door startled him.
Kieran frowned, pushing back from the desk. He wasn’t expecting anyone.
He opened the door to find a UPS driver already heading back to his truck, a package sitting on the porch.
“Thanks,” Kieran called after him, though the guy was already gone.
He picked up the box and looked at the label.
Rory Kline.
Wrong side of the duplex.
Kieran looked at the package. Looked at Rory’s door. Looked back at the package.
This was a perfectly reasonable excuse to knock.
He crossed the driveway.