Alright, so about these fences..Where do I begin? I'm not exactly sure how to start this. Personally, I think that everyone has some sort of "fence" in their life, whether it is conscious or not. It's part of human nature to block out certain things, and keep others in. Everyone does it. As for me, I have a few of these that I'm aware of.
Firstly, my mom has been a major factor in my life. When I was younger, I would always feel responsible for her safety. Things weren't so great back then, so I wanted to make sure that, no matter what, she was alright. I suppose that I tried to keep her in my so-called "safety net", and I pushed out other people that I thought weren't beneficial to her. Then, she moved away when I was a freshman and ever since then, I haven't exactly been sure of how things are. I feel way more protective over her since she is living on the other side of the country, but it doesn't really work because I can't do anything when she is so far away..if that makes sense.
Another thing that I noticed during this "exercise" was that I block out a lot of people from my own life. Last year, I had a bad experience that effected me greatly. I'd rather not bring that up, though. My point is, is that ever since this event/series of events, I've had a fear of letting people get close to me, emotionally. I was hurt bad enough that I never wanted to experience that again, and I basically screwed up every relationship and even a few friendships since then. I didn't want to do this, but I subconsciously messed up everything so that I wouldn't let myself be at risk to relive the past. It's definitely made me a lot less outgoing than I used to be. I find it somewhat difficult to go up to people; I usually just wait for them to come to me.
Over the past few months though, I've gotten better at letting people get close to me again. Now, I can sort of comfortably get emotionally close to people without getting worried and shutting them out. I wish things didn't happen like that, but I couldn't really control it at the time. But thankfully I'm getting over it, because I have definitely missed sharing that emotional bond with people.
I guess for most people, fences are just a safety barrier that protects them from things that they see are not beneficial to their existence. As well as that, it keeps in the important things that they would not want to get hurt or lose.
But that's just the way that I see it.