Some Secrets Can Only Be Dealt With In Silence

If walls could talk, I would scream. I would not be silenced in revealing all the things that happen between closed walls. They say that every family has its secrets, but in the hundreds of years that I am standing here, I have never witnessed any more secrets than those of the Patterson family.

I am a wall in the bedroom of the daughter of Mark Patterson.

She painted me pink when she moved in 25 years ago. She chose golden suede curtains to cover my window friends. And she decorated me with posters of horses.

Later on, she also wrote lyrics of songs on me:

"They can say all they wanna say about me

But I, I'm gonna carry on

I'll keep on singin' my song"

- Keep On Singing My Song by Christina Aguilera

I have to admit that I was excited to get a girl inside my walls this time. The previous resident had been a 15-year-old lousy teenager who almost smoked as much weed as he jerked off. I can tell you that's not a pretty sight.

So it made me extremely happy when Macy Patterson entered the room for the first time, bright and shiny - dancing around the open floor and amazed by the space she had acquired.

She couldn't hide the look in her eyes from me, though. A look that holds a lot of secrets. Secrets I wish I never had to witness.

Since walls can't talk, I am here to write my story down in words. I guess I have always somehow been intrigued by the permanence of ink on paper. You might wonder how walls can write, but I made my thoughts back into the head of Macy, who is now 35 years old. She now has a mind that can communicate with history and fingers that can write what might never be spoken.

I haven't seen Macy for 18 years now, but I think about her often. I wonder what has become of her. If she managed to deal with what had happened to her all those years of growing up.

Often I wish I could have talked to her in those moments. I would tell her it's not her fault. I would whisper how beautiful she truly is. How strong of a woman she is becoming. I would cheer her on every time she posed in front of the mirror with her new clothes. I would encourage her to embrace her young adult body and help her see how precious it is.

But unfortunately, I am just a wall - not talking, not whispering, not cheering on. The only thing I can do is be a silent witness to her secrets.

Macy's secrets are largely the same as Mark's secrets, although I doubt that he will remember any of them. If walls could talk, I would shout in his face to keep his hands off his fucking daughter. I would force him to look with my eyes at Macy, so the damage he is doing is burned on his brain forever.

If I could trade places with Mark, maybe none of her secrets would have happened. He would hear the cute conversations she has with her plush animals about him. He would see the little drawings she makes of happy families. He would listen to the quirky songs she sings when she is in a silly mood.

And as she grows up, he might dance with her to the R&B songs she loves so much (and whose lyrics are now all over my pink coat). He might laugh at her attempts to put makeup on for the first time, to look pretty. He might support her when she falls in love when she turns 16.

But walls can't talk and I can't trade places. All I can do is accept the truth and face what happened within my walls.

In all those years I've gotten to know Mark maybe even more than Macy. The Patterson family was complicated, to say the least. But Mark was not just complicated - he was broken.

Mark was broken by the same damage his father did to him that he is now doing to Macy. And Mark was never as strong as Macy to be able to face his truth. It could be that Mark's memories were darker than what his mind could possibly remember. Who am I to judge? I am just a wall. All I can do is keep their memories safe with me.

Maybe it's a good thing that walls can't talk. Some secrets can only be dealt with in silence. Maybe walls only exist to get memories back into the heads of their residents - when the time is right.

Because only by recreating our memories, can we rewrite our future. It's up to Macy now to keep her secrets - or if she decides that walls can actually sometimes talk.