I must remain silent, and I know that is right, but this morning as I drove in the car I felt this feeling. What is it? I wondered, curious. My chest was quivering, felt achey. I let it do what it needed to do, confident that the answer would rise up out of the mist of my unknowing. There it is - the feeling. Alone. I feel alone. I want to talk to somebody. I want to share what I’m feeling inside. But I can’t. At least not right now. That’s how life is, isn’t it? People walking around with smiles on their faces, and we never know that their mother is dying, or their sister just got into a car accident. We think everything is always fine, because everybody’s always asking, “How are you?” and we automatically answer, “Fine. How are you?” but we really don’t want an honest answer. We don’t have time.
I want to tell somebody that I am afraid right now. I don’t know exactly what I’m afraid of, because I usually process things better when I talk about them, and there’s no one I can talk to right now. It’s funny. I’m a very public person. I’ll tell you about my depression many years ago, about my anxiety, about my abusive past relationships, about my shopping habit and neurotic tendencies. But there are things I won’t tell anyone. There are things my husband and I know, and things my children and I know. There are things my father and I went through with my mother that nobody else knows. Not because I keep it secret for any particular reason, but because they are so big I can’t wrap my arms around them so I don’t even try. But this secret? It’s not a secret. Plenty of people know. If it’s about me, I may tell. Why? Because I think we need each other’s stories to not feel so alone. When we share we don’t feel isolated. But there’s probably shame, and guilt, and fear, and when those emotions are present they only need one careless flick of the wrist to set the whole bundle of dynamite off, and I don’t know what would happen when it explodes, for it will most surely explode. Nothing can remain secret. Nothing remains in the dark. That’s just not the way it works anymore.
That’s the hell, and the heaven, I think. I don’t want any secrets in my own life. I don’t want to feel that there’s anything dark or shameful about me. I think of a few things from my childhood and I feel my face getting red, but then I remember the source of those behaviors and I feel compassion toward the younger me. I was weird, yes, but again, that’s part of my quirkiness that I actually love. I’m not cookie cutter; neither are you. You may want to be just like everybody else, or quirky in acceptable ways ("Oh, I love country AND classical music! Aren’t I weird? Hahahah!"). I laugh as I type that because I catch myself trying to figure me out sometimes. I never quite figure it out. What do I want to say? I’m circling, not landing.
What I want to say is that I am in a place of silence in my life. I cannot speak. At first I squirm against the restrictions, then I think, “Whoever said I have to talk ALL the time, and say EVERYTHING?” I don’t know. I probably think that. But it’s not necessarily true. There are plenty of things to be silent about, if only for a while. As my Guys once told me, “Talk less and say more.” I’m contemplating that right now. Maybe it’s okay not to talk to anybody. Maybe I can just write it all out so somebody hears me. So I feel heard. So I don’t feel so alone. And so silent.