WALLS OF TEXT

“I’m attracted to you and I think you’re really cool but I don’t feel connected to you” said the man I’d been dating for seven months or so.

I had recently expressed a desire to escalate the intimacy between us, by sending him a wall of text. After he got over his initial feelings about a wall of text seeming to make demands out of nowhere, he got curious about what I was asking for and found he was open to it. When we discussed this in person, he said those words me.

He was into me, curious about me, interested in me, but he didn’t feel connected to me.

This is such a familiar, old pain for me. Here I am, really liking him, really enjoying our time together, really thinking that I’m open to and desiring of intimacy, while simultaneously keeping him out. Keeping an invisible wall between us that I didn’t want and wasn’t doing on purpose.

It was jealousy that alerted me that I needed to tell him what he meant to me. Him talking about another partner sent a flash of pain through me. Thank you, jealousy, as always, for telling me what I need to hear. It was this that lead to the wall of text.

It wasn’t even a huge wall of text. It was just a sudden assertive expression of desire for intimacy, expressed without warning or context, in writing, when I’m normally relatively closed off. This can surprise people and it can even put them off. It can feel demanding, confusing, coming out of left field, etc. But for me, this is the doorway to intimacy. The wall of text is the way in. I have to risk it.

There is so much I can’t say because the silence smothers me. There is so much I can’t speak. This is engrained, trained, and feels sometimes insurmountable. The silence sneaks in as I try and try and try to speak. The words scattered and disconnected like a handful of marbles thrown on the floor.

But writing. Writing is the opening, the window. Writing is the place where the truth shines like a light in the night. Writing is a beacon, a breadtrail, the place where the truth will always find a way out. Writing is where nothing can hide and everything can be seen. And in writing I can take my time, I can be careful, I can be intentional. And I can say impossible, unsayable things. Like what I want. Like the truth of me. Like the content of my heart.

He took an interest in my walls of text. He saw that they were the key, the way past the silence, the way through the door. He took his time with them, reading them and writing his own beautiful walls of text in response. My writer heart. The way in, the way that he can hear me, the way that I can hear him, and the words are there, written, if I ever decide to disbelieve them, they will be right there for me.

His walls of text: reciprocity, responsibility, curiosity, intentionality, meeting me. He met my vulnerability with his own, again and again, and in this way we came to know each other. Our time together in person, touching each other and looking into each others’ eyes, luxuriating in each other’s bodies and presence, is scaffolded by these walls of text. When the silence takes me over I can trust the walls of text to show us the way through.

My greatest ambition is to be my writer self all the time. My greatest ambition is the authenticity that writing grants me to be my natural state. I want to say out loud and immediately what I can say in writing. Will I be able to get there? I don’t know but I think so. I’m excited to try. The walls of text are part of that process. They allow me to say what it feels impossible for me to say. The walls of text are the centre of intimacy, the way into my heart.

I feel such tender warmth and vulnerability at his willingness to meet me there. To not project assumptions onto my sudden writing but to get curious about it. To do the work of writing his own walls of text. To build the scaffolding so that I can begin to speak out loud. He is patient and curious and kind. He is reciprocal and responsible. And I feel safe to begin to speak.

We are not disconnected anymore.

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Clementine Morrigan is a writer and public intellectual based in Montréal, Canada. She writes popular and controversial essays about culture, politics, ethics, relationships, sexuality, and trauma. A passionate believer in independent media, she’s been making zines since the year 2000 and is the author of several books. She’s known for her iconic white-text-on-a-black-background mini-essays on Instagram. One of the leading voices on the Canadian Left and one half of the Fucking Cancelled podcast, Clementine is an outspoken critic of cancel culture and a proponent of building solidarity across difference. She is a socialist, a feminist, and a vegan for the animals and the earth.

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