That is the thing no one warns you about walls: that they do not discriminate.

I had built mine for a specific and, I told myself, reasonable purpose.

The divorce had hurt more than I would admit to anyone, including myself, and I had responded the way I responded to every kind of pain, by sealing it out — by instructing the people around me to filter, to buffer, to keep the wound from reaching my desk while I threw myself into the one thing I knew I was good at.

I called it protecting my focus.