LETTING GO OF SILENCE

Even with my closest friends and confidants, I do not like to lay my emotions on the line or wear my heart on my sleeve, so to speak. I have been hurt many times. Beaten, broken, let down and disregarded more times and in more ways than I care to recount in full.  But I still believe in love, I still believe in humanity and I still believe in the beauty that we rarely see around us. I believe in these things because despite all the ugly I've seen in my life I've also seen the beauty.  The people closest to me will tell you that I am a straightforward and rational person with little tolerance for frivolous things. This is how I protect my heart - my heart being the gentle pieces of me that break so easily - my defence mechanism is logic and reasoning.

Scream

I started blogging as a way of dealing with a very tough heartbreak that I've had. I needed to say things.  Not intimate details of my life - not anything particular at all.  Just things really.  Because there's something about silence.  There's something about the feeling you get when you say things and no one listens.  I often imagine that it would be the same as if you were floating in the middle of an ocean on a calm day; the surface placid as glass; the sun beaming down; the waters coolly caressing your tired body.  Then you scream so loud and so long that it begins to hurt.  And you see yourself screaming and you feel yourself screaming, but you can't hear yourself screaming.  And although you know that no one else is there to hear you, the thing that really hurts the most is that you can't hear yourself screaming.  And somehow ahead of the fear of being lost at sea for all eternity; there lives a fear that the silence will kill you.

My older brother passed away two years ago this summer.  The pain and loneliness of that loss was almost too much to bare.  There was hardly anyone to talk to about it - my family was hurting too, and it seemed every time I brought it up the conversations quickly turned into a back and forth about who missed him most - so that became frivolous.  My friends, for the most part, simply didn't know what to say.  And I quickly began to feel burdened by even the thought of sharing my pain; so I let it go.  The average person on the street always made pointless remarks..."It's gonna be ok."  "Worst things could happen."  "Dying is a part of living."

Did you know that the worst advice that you can give a person who has a problem, is anything cliche?  There is a trove of truth in cliches but still no sincerity.  I've grown to despise them these past two years.

I started wondering what the point of life is if I; a woman with few friends, two children and nothing much else in this life; could be so unworthy to God that He would take such a big part of me so easily. When others have so much to give; why would He take from me the little that I had? I tried to convince myself that God had a special plan. That He was preparing me for the greatest victory of my life. That He would never put more on me than I could bare.  I tell myself this constantly but I can't say honestly that I believe it.  I've had to fight so many battles and if no one else, my brother was the one who fought beside me.

I was depressed and my life started to fall apart. Other troubles started to appear - on top of the troubles that were there before my brother passed.  People started walking out.  The person that I was dating at the time told me plainly that my life was just too much for him to deal with.  I became even more depressed.

One day I was just sitting there, staring blindly into space without thinking of anything.  And I looked at my children and I imagined their life without me - because I sincerely wanted to die.  I wasn't happy with what I saw and it made me realize that these children were my purpose in life.  I looked at the darkness, the pain and the emptiness in my heart and I knew that that pain was nothing compared to what it would be if I were to lose one of them.  And I knew also that I would suffer this pain a thousand times before I let one of my babies suffer it once.  I realized then that what I feel for them and what I felt for my brother is love, unconditionally. It cannot die.

And from this knowing...my journey began...

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What inspired this post is a private message that I received in response to something I recently posted in social media.  Recently, I've been trying my best to be unshrouded because I believe that nakedness helps to rebuild a broken heart.  How so?...Because I no longer waste effort, energy and time stacking skeletons into my closet.  It's part of my journey in becoming a better person.  I was asked the question; 'what do you know about struggle.' That made me smile.  Funny thing is, everything that I write is written from a point of struggle.  Everything that I talk about; I've been through.  Writing is my way of facing down the demons that are ever present in my life.  I've made the choice to not allow the things that have hurt me in the past continue to hurt me now or in the future.  Secrets are powerful.  And so I lay my past bare so that it has no power over me.  I refrain from assuming the secrets of others.  I never read words and see only black and white.  Because I imagine that every mind and every heart is so simply complicated...just like mine.

I know what it feels like to be lost and confused.
I understand what the sister felt like who longed only to touch the hem of Christ's garment.  It is not an empowering feeling nor a glorious one.  It is a feeling of desperation.  It is an unholy and undesirable feeling.  The kind of feeling you get when you are no longer able to define your existence.  The kind of feeling you get when your only hope comes from believing that some how, there must be hope.
And I know what it feels like to have the need to say something - anything - to someone - anyone - who is willing to listen - not a pretend kind of listen, but a real and heartfelt listen.

But what I've come to learn is that I can't wait for someone to listen.
What I've come to learn is the wisdom in the words of Maya Angelou...

"Listen to yourself, and in that quietude, you might hear the voice of God."

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