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.