Somewhere along the way I lost my voice
It all started when I was in elementary school and choose to stop talking all together. There were two options,either to fight or flight. In earlier years as rebelliously as I could I would choose to fight, even if it was a silly thing to fight for.
The first event was the stance I took on not wearing socks despite the cold frosty winter. I remember every morning yelling at the top of my lungs back and forth at my mom. One particularly dreary morning, after frantically running for the bus and tripping on my face on the way down the street, I found the anger to be a bit too much. This erupted into a personal explosion.
The little boy on the bus had relentlessly made fun of me and so I grabbed his head and beat it against the window. My anger at the bantering and at men all poured out with ever blow. (He was ok though) The response was shocking, comparatively to the normal quiet demeanor that I had withheld. Needless to say the bus driver stopped the bus and I got in trouble, which was terrifying because he too was a mean angry man.
That was the very day I gave up fighting for life. I went home and ripped apart every single word written in my journals and swore to never remember or speak of the very things that made my soul crawl. I reverted from the world in silence and stuffed my thoughts deep within the shadows of my soul, tapping into the artistry of creative flight.
I had to mentally detach because life with my family was so mentally exhausting, especially my narcissist of a father “the master of mind games and control”. To have boundaries was a foreign concept in his twisted mind. I remember sitting in the car and he would touch my leg…I would scoot all the way to the other side of the car unaware that this kind of affection was not normal.
His silence and his speaking was always one of an inappropriate tone. If he wasnt following me around the house in luminous silence he was erupting in some sort of crazed frenzy fit. If he was not sitting around watching my every move he was talking your face off. During dinner he would erupt into a full on conversations with himself about how great he was with his mouth full of food.
His favorite hobby was inventing outrageous rules to follow:
- Don’t cook because you will burn the house down
- Don’t ask your mom to cook “Its my time with her first!!!”
- Don’t paint outside you will get paint all over grass
- Stop changing the temperature in the house (even though I never touched it)
- Don’t talk in the car while I am driving
- Don’t play your music so loud
- Don’t listen to “worldly” music
- Don’t go outside and play in the rain because you will be struck by lighting
…and the list continues
Today it is ok to be angry and to fight for life. I choose the middle ground between fight and flight, to take back my voice and speak for myself. To take back my memories and gain understanding one post at a time. To bring these ugly truths out of the shadow of my mind and into the light.
Stay strong my friends<3 know you are not alone
