The Walls I Carry: Claire G. Coleman

Featured music is ‘Watching Galaxies from Afar’ by Ave Air

About the Author

Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays, poetry and art writing while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. During an extended circuit of the continent, she wrote a novel, Terra Nullius, which won the black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship and was listed for 8 awards including a shortlisting for The Stella Prize. Lies, Damned Lies is her first full length work of non-fiction.

Transcript

I crossed the line when you drew it in my path. 

So stop telling me to get over it. 

I tried to go high and then you went low; you always go low while demanding I go higher. I have tried to be above this, to get beyond it, but it’s all laid out before me; walls and barriers designed to keep me in my place, in the place you made for me. I am above myself and beyond myself, so I am also below and before. You can never be harder on me than I am on myself. 

Before I go high I need to know; how high is high enough? 

I have lived a long time, I’m nearly fifty, and people have told me all my life that I have to get over it—over walls too high to climb, walls designed to keep me in, keep me here, hold me back. I’m getting old, too old to learn new tricks, too old to climb to your expectations, too old to move on, get over. But not yet too old to fight—never too old to fight. 

I have tried all my life to be better than I always felt I was. I have been driven to be free of my limitations, to rise above; I have triumphed. I am here, I have the voice I sought; perhaps not despite my limits but because of them. Because I carry who I am with me, and all the weight laid upon me by others. No matter what I do, no matter what I become, I am still trapped on the wrong side of the intersection. 

But it’s my life, my past, that made me who I am. Without the weight of my disadvantage, I would not have the strength to fight. 

Nobody is harder than me than I am on myself. I have to live with that, but I will not get over it—I would rather break through it. 

So this is me, this is all of me, all I am. Trapped within walls that you created, but which I have built higher. This is not my weight to carry. It’s not my weight, but it weighs me down. It’s not my problem (am I the problem?) but it might as well be. You tell me to go high when I carry all this weight, all this weight. I want to claim this thing I carry, because if it is mine I can destroy it. 

I want to cast it off. I want to break free; I intend to live beyond and above everything you think you can expect from me. 

Why do you want me to get over it when you are always beneath it? Why do you expect more of me than you would expect from yourself; do you think so little of yourself that you cannot surpass my barriers? Do you think so much of me that you keep giving me more to beat? 

I didn’t get over it because you made the walls too high to leap. I don’t even want to get over it; I don’t want to even try any more. I won’t rise above, I won’t go high—I will break through, go beyond, and as I pass I will make the portal wider. I will tear the walls down, so others can pass through behind me. When I break through I will make a passage for us all. When I break through I will take you with me. 

Come with me; tear down those walls. We don’t need them, we don’t want them, we don’t want to have to get over them. 

If I cross the line again and again, my crossings may erase it. If you cross the line with me we can destroy it, erase it together. Come with me; the line is before us, it’s always there, it’s always in our path, because what’s the point of a line we don’t want to cross? What is the point of a line if it’s not restrictive? 

I won’t go above, I only go beyond. 

I crossed the line because you drew it in my path.  

This initiative is supported by the Metro Tunnel Creative Program which harnesses the innovation, imagination, and expertise of the creative sector to help manage construction impacts.