I recently reconnected with an old and painful memory.
In reaching out to touch the psychic lacerations, I was confronted by
the sharp facets of the silence that I have held tightly around me for many years. Each time I have remembered
and chosen not to speak, my silence has been strengthened, reinforced by the weight
of protecting others. It has grown around me like scar tissue greedy to reclaim the wound. I have been complicit in smothering my own freedom, and with it my power to face the world.
Even now there are questions I ask but have no answers for,
because I have not lived through the speaking of them. Is it ever fair to burden another person with the fullness of your harrowing memory? To write
about it? Will there be repercussions
for other people? What judgments or
impressions will be formed by people who know me, away from the page, in the
real breathing world? Does that even
matter?
I am mindful that the impulse to conceal, to protect with
my silence, is tied to a deep sense of shame. As if having terrible things done to me is
somehow a reflection on me, on my character, on my worthiness. And that is exactly the reason it is so vital
that I express the truth of this lived experience.
It was something that happened to me, but it is not about me. Speaking about it, writing
about it, transforms it. I take something
awful, and with it I create something beautiful. I weave the rough unruly strands into a rope
ladder, silken and strong, that lets me climb free of the thorns that have
surrounded me for too long.
