Thursday 4 December 2014

The Pit

Did you think I didn't understand your darkest moods?
That's what I felt like saying but didn't. The words stuck in the back of my throat like a too large and sharp piece of crisp; lodged there for a time before finally being pushed down to reside in a deep, dark pit. The words thought, but never typed or spoken until now.
Why now?
Because those words rise as if to taut me, make me feel sick, and now I must get them down before I slap them down, raise my hand to them as if I held a whip. I must release them from the pit.
Confrontation. Discussion. Have my say. Hear my voice. Converse with another. I hate all of those forms. Hate is a strong word, detest is an improvement – less aggressive, less forceful – but no, the written form has always served me better.
The words I want to say never come out the right way to the people that matter; sometimes they don't come out at all. Unspoken, they linger and encircle my person, until they're in their thousands, swimming around me like goldfish or tadpoles, so that I have to spew them out onto a plain page. But even the plain page sometimes resists me...the sentences in my head express themselves differently or find themselves trampled by a surge of more persistent words that won't patiently wait their turn. I go on a detour, explore a new avenue, a different route, and find that by the end of it I'm not wholly satisfied with the outcome. It doesn't say what I so bluntly wanted to say. What I wanted to blurt out.
Say the right words. Has she said it? NOW!
No, I can't.
Do you not think that I too have been there, in that deep, dark pit?
That black hollow gobbles up my words and steals a fragile part of my soul. It's not a place you can share, but I tell you I have been there. Banished.
Do you think I don't know that nobody is perfect? Imperfection makes a person complete. Black and white. Light and dark. Two halves to every heart.
Are those words right or wrong? Why do they have to be one or the other?
Words, words, words....
Some people think, some people talk, some people write what they think or think before they talk. Some people don't care what they say; they clumsily lay barbed wire over the opening of the pit anyway. It's their human right to have their say and inflict stigmata on a less hardier person.
Censor. Evaluate. Zip it!
But even two can lose that thread of communication. What once appeared strong suddenly snaps with no prior warning. Both are forced into a personalised pit through unforeseeable actions; both hurting for different reasons. What once was cannot be retrieved, it has been lost, possibly forever, but...the thread still dangles...
Unsaid words hang in that dark, empty space, and clamour for attention. Let me out! Listen!
They rattle the metal bars or pierce delicate skin; throw stones or sometimes old bones from the past. They yell like banshees or whisper like cunning ghosts. You'll feel better if you let me out just the once, just the once and then I'll be silenced.
Is it true? I don't know. My pit remains closed to trespassers. It's mine and mine alone. The pressure builds and erupts, or takes me all the way down to meet it.
Just because I speak to it and not of it, don't presume I don't know the doubting dark.