That’s kind of how I feel—like a full human being trapped inside a stutterer’s mouth. We are complete beneath the surface, but half of it is always somehow lost in translation. It drifts off into some void, and we are left with this distinct feeling that we aren’t coming across as how we’d like to, how we really are.
“You’re so cold,” he said. And the impression I give is not so far off.
“It’s a gift,” I said, with a smile. But what I mean by gift is that it’s a fucking, fucking curse. There are two ends on this shit of a spectrum. There are those A) that feel everything, all at once, and can’t help but show every moment of those feelings to whoever will listen. They are water, spilling everywhere, and drowning everything in sight.
And there’s B) the rocks, the islands unto themselves. Everything is contained, bottled up, and we are stuttering our emotions out in broken upheavals. I speak in a language nobody else knows. There are words, here and there, sprinkled with comprehension. But the true meaning never makes it to the other side.
That’s how I felt last night, laying on Tom’s floor in the dark, watching my totem animal, the wolf, just look at me when I asked for help. Help me be happy with what I have to be happy with. I begged, I pleaded, and he kept on staring. My tears fell into my ear drums, and as I looked up at the stars, I couldn’t help but think, ‘man, this is going to be humiliating when I have to sit up again.’
And it was. But the worst part was sitting back up, looking at Bill, and Tom, and Shane, and not being able to tell them how I felt in that moment. The…rage, and the rejection, and this feeling of helplessness. They are all there, just like everybody else. But I keep them locked so airtight that sometimes I explode. And that explosion is never vocal. It is water-logged ears, and a quivering lip, but never, never words showing the rest of the world that I’m just as fucking scared as they all are. I get quiet, I shut down. I be alone.
I guess I realized, on that floor, that it isn’t even the rejection I am scared of. Once I have the words, and I say the words, the answer never really matters anymore. The important thing was having said precisely what I wanted to say, even without hope or agenda. But when I can’t say the words, the rejection is everything. It is automatic in it’s application, because I put up nothing to contradict it. So I sit back, I rock the rocking chair. I blink instead of speak. All of my emotions fill my veins instead of the air, and he is coming over to say goodbye, he’s picking up his keys. The truth, the chain that had started it all, is put aside, and I’m left discussing trivial things. I’m left, throwing cellos into windows.
