High School Moments Still Echo

Another Blog in My Song Series

Another Brick in the Quiet Wall

Inspired by Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”   and one humiliating day in English class.

There are moments in your life when a single experience — not dramatic enough to be called trauma, not benign enough to forget — slides quietly into place and becomes one more brick in the wall you didn’t know you were building.

One of mine happened in high school.

I was in all the college-prep classes. High achiever. Quiet, observant, never causing trouble; the kid teachers never had to worry about. And I loved writing. Actually, I was good at it. Awards, recognition, that sort of thing. It was one of the few places where I felt fully myself.

And then came the day I waited until the last minute to write an English paper. I don’t remember why. Maybe I was overwhelmed. Maybe something was going on at home. Maybe teenage life was doing that thing where it squeezes you without warning. But the paper was awful and I knew it the moment I turned it in.

What I didn’t know was that the teacher was going to read it out loud to the entire class.

Not as an example. Not as a teaching moment. As a spectacle.

I sat there frozen, listening to my own rushed, messy words echo back at me, carried by her voice that somehow made them sound even worse. The room felt huge and tiny at the same time — like every ear was tuned in and every exit was locked from the inside.

And here’s the part that still stings in that quiet, buried way:

She knew I was better than that. She’d seen my work. She’d praised my writing. She could have pulled me aside and asked what was going on; why this one assignment was so unlike me. But she didn’t. She chose public humiliation over curiosity.

And just like that, a brick slid into place.

When I think about Another Brick in the Wall, what stands out now isn’t the rebellion, or the chant, or even the critique of the education system. It’s the idea that harm is cumulative — small, procedural, sometimes delivered by people who never stop to consider the weight of what they’re doing. The song calls out how dehumanizing, rigid environments shape us brick by brick and how even “dark sarcasm in the classroom” becomes part of the emotional wall we build around ourselves. [explainsong.com]

Another analysis describes the damage as “procedural,” done not by dramatic events but by routine humiliation that teaches you your inner life is an inconvenience. It says each small wound becomes another brick sealing you off from connection. When I read that, I felt it in my chest. Because that’s exactly how that moment in English class landed: quietly, efficiently, and with long-term effect. [summitborn.com]

Looking back, that day didn’t destroy me. But it did shape me.
It taught me to shrink a little.
To be invisible when I wasn’t perfect.
To retreat when I wasn’t at my best.

It taught me that vulnerability could be punished.

And so, the wall grew.

But here’s the part I didn’t understand then and I only understand now, after years of unlearning, self-work, spiritual practice, and dogs who don’t care if I hand in my homework late:

You can take the bricks back out.

One by one.

You can rewrite the story.
You can reclaim the parts of yourself that got quiet.
You can choose softness again — for yourself, and toward yourself.

If you’re like me, your walls weren’t built out of defiance. They were built out of self-protection. And that means they can be dismantled gently, at your own pace, without shame.

All it takes is noticing one brick, the one that doesn’t belong anymore, and giving yourself permission to loosen it.

Let a little light in.
Let a little more of you out.

The invisible becomes visible, slowly, in its own time.

And that’s enough.