Why don't I write here anymore? I think a part of me doesn't want to answer that question here. It's not safe anymore. After all this time, all these months, I've realized that I've been bullied to keeping my mouth shut about some aspects of my life. The realm of my mind that needs a voice doesn't have an understanding ear. And I'm sick and tired of trying to say what it is, without saying what it is. But then, don't expect me to say it now that I've mentioned I'm sick of keeping it to myself.
What I want to say, I want to say it to a person. To their face. I want to read their expressions and watch for sparks of understanding, insight, inspiration, and I want to hear what they have to say about what I said. I want them to talk to me with the desire to know what I have to say about what they said. I want to hear and feel the tone of the voice, read and experience the body language. I want to be someone to them in real life, and I want them to be someone to me in the same living space.
This medium of text, a string of words which only convey just a microcosm of information is cold, empty, shallow. It is not the essence of the person; it's not the essence of me. These are just my words filtered through hours of thought and rewriting. I don't talk like this; I don't express my essence this way.
When someone experiences me in the flesh, they don't see the formality or the humor they saw in my writing. I don't think that fast, I don't talk that fast. I stumble with what to say, I constantly misspeak my thoughts and often repeat myself. Many times the words I want to speak never seem to reach my mouth leaving me to frustratingly search, strain and grasp for them. Often in failure. I know what they mean, I know what I want to convey, but that damn word won't come forward. So I pause, think, ponder, clear my head, wait for the word to come to the surface. "Ses...sees...serrs...serrr...serpe...serep...what the fuck is the word I'm looking for?"
This is not stuttering. I'm vocalizing in an attempt to stir up the word to come forward. Perhaps, desperately, give the listener, who I would hope hasn't tuned me out already, a clue so they could offer a suggestion to trigger my memory. All too often they have tuned me out or take my pause as a queue instead to change the subject or worse, walk away.
Things haven't always been this way. But they are getting worse and I fear that in time I will have lost all ability.
Nonetheless, with that frustration aside, speaking my mind, has given me more than any writing has done because it has connected me to people in deeper ways, given my mind a chance to reprogram all of its errant beliefs about body language, mannerisms, vocal tone, and the intent behind it, undoing years of social malignment from growing up with emotionally abusive parents up in a deeply judgmental culture. It's allowed me to find a community of likeminded people who can relate to my ideas and feelings and given me perspective and companionship.
But, only to a certain extent.
I've come to a moment in my life where I have found that I can no longer speak an important aspect of my essence. I've tried to speak it but I get blank stares, disapproving glances or just plain antagonistic comebacks to shut the fuck up about it. Bullying. This place, this blog, is actually not a safe space for me to explore those thoughts either. For this aspect in my life, I'm not in the right community. I'm stuck, alone again, without a community for the thoughts in my head.
But I do know where those communities are! And even though I don't know the right words to use, I give it a try anyway. And if it doesn't fall apart right away, or never starts because I'm not versed on using the correct language, it eventually falls apart anyway. Why? Because I'm too far away. I'm not worth the trouble or the time because I'm too far away. But what do they mean by that? Many of them are willing to travel 5 to 10, 20 hours away, or even fly across the country. But they won't for me? Why? Because I don't live in a city or an area of the country that interests them; I don't live in a place where there is a community. It's just me. And because of that, I seem to have nothing to offer them, despite my ability and willingness to travel to them. So our communication ends. They no longer return my inquiries or express any interest in what I have to say. No more email, no more chats. Alone, again.
That triggers me. Anxiety, frustration, anger, hurt, rejection, abandonment...
The only thing left is to delete them from Facebook so I don't have to subject myself to a constant barge of all the great things they are posing about the community. And as I'm quickly losing my ability to freely travel, I can't help but think to myself, "what's the fucking point of any of it anymore?"
All, I've got right now is my isolation in my dead end job in a corner of the world where no one wants to be.
Hiya,
ReplyDeleteI had a feeling like that once. Survived a freak heart attack (was only 28 yrs old) and for a long while I was speech stuck like crazy (couldn't think of right words, then words came and had forgotten what I meant to say, etc). No one was there with me, but then most of that was because I wouldn't tell most of them because they wouldn't be able to do anything anyway. It probably isn't the same as your current state, but perhaps similar?
Anyhow, just dropping in a note to tell you to hang in there. It may not feel like it would, sometimes, but this funk will probably pass (hopefully) soon. Perhaps the sticky friends are waiting just around the blind bend. In the meanwhile, there are still us more elusive blogging virtual friends. Not the same, but sometimes it doesn't take much. ;o)
Warm thoughts and cheery wishes from Southern California!