Silenced…

All my life I’ve been told to ‘hush, be quiet Treez. You’re too loud, have nothing to say, too stupid‘… These words are a constant, like Tuesday following Monday, my thirst for coffee when I wake up, eggs and bacon… ‘shut up’ and ‘Theresa’ just go together… until recently, though, thanks to some close loved ones I started to believe I did indeed actually have a voice. Albeit, at times, excitable, I could, in fact, speak mind.

And I was excited. Words battled in my head to be heard. Years of feeling insignificant, in the shadow of others, now left and in its place slowly came a new person, one who, okay, maybe lacked eloquence, polish… never would have the gift of a wordsmith, but through poetry and the medium of writing I at last found a voice, an outlet I had hungered so long for.

I do know my spoken voice is loud and can be harsh, brash even. My fiance, who’s slightly deaf from years playing in a band, can hear me in another state. LOL There’s nothing I can do about it… I was born this way. It got far worse due to thyroid issues and other ill health but I do try to be as quiet as I possibly can. But when I’m nervous, anxiety-ridden, upset, or just plain excited, words tumble from my mouth with gay abandon like little birds flying free 😁.

I hate it if I’m honest. (No, really I do.) In fact, from childhood at times I prayed for that quiet feminine whisper of a voice, even to the point for the longest time that I would lose my voice permanent. Stupid, I know, but I want to fit in… I wanted so to be normal, whatever that may be. What I want so much is to be like YOU, dear reader! As I said in the beginning, the words ‘be quiet!‘ are not new to me. But each time I hear them I go back, way back to a parent spitting as she bellowed ‘Shut up Theresa! No one wants to hear what you have to say!‘ Siblings laughing if I voiced an opinion, encouraged by the other adults in my family.

So I never ventured an opinion again. Whenever I spoke it was about the weather, TV, a book I read… safe topics. I smiled, laughed, but inside my head was a whirlpool of words, clambering over each other to be heard. Still I held them in. As I did they swirled around, festered. If I sat quietly I heard them screaming for a voice, these mixed with shouting voices of those that had filled my ears with ugliness and hate. So if I speak too much this was and is the reason… it’s to hush the din in my head, quiet the shouting of my long ago bullies that threaten to swallow me up in their blackness.

Over months now a few have encouraged me to open my heart, tell my truths, not fear reprisals, be brave, let the beaten child within escape and have her voice. It’s not been easy because I revert back to her easily and crawl into that little ball when I hear a raised voice or I feel I’m being mocked. (This is left over from my past.) But thanks Jesse I grew braver, more forthcoming. With him came poetry and a love of writing.

But just as steady as I grew, there’s some who, to be fair to them, do not know of my history and the pit I’m trying so hard to climb out from. And again, whether they know it or not, their words have destroyed months of hard work. Once more I’ve reverted to the little child hiding in a cold, hard-floored landing of my childhood home, no bigger than 5′ by 5’… silent, so as not to cause a fuss or draw attention until my dad came home and I was safe from the lash of a tongue or my mother’s cane.

One such time was Wednesday. I can’t go into detail, but again someone flew into a rage at me. In my new found shaky confidence I tried so hard to stand my corner as I’m being encouraged to do, but the voice of authority overrode, silenced, did not give me chance, and much to my hurt and anger the little girl again took over. She wanted to scream of the injustice! Even in her fear, she wanted a voice. She knew the pains I had taken, the fake courage I had tried to summon up, knew of the illness I suffered through sheer terror of the situation I was going through.

Also the nights I laid awake reliving years of heartache and abuse so I would have the information ready, the cold sweats of the night terrors while I slept, racing heart, knotted stomach not able to keep in food, I felt weak before but I clawed every last scrap of energy and courage I could for that day, knowing it was going to be torture , and within minutes I was unfairly silenced… wrongly as it happens. But the muttered words ‘I’m sorry‘ don’t take away the me that crumbled, the me again silenced, my years of pain, my years of abuse and being used. Words that I never wanted to utter in the first place once more, in split seconds, buried forever in my head. And quite frankly that’s where I want them to stay. I was crushed in those few words.

So what now? I’m too tired to cope. I had used all I had to get there, to do this one thing to protect me, and once again I’m silenced and in hiding. I have no voice… it was taken away, robbed, and I’m using what little energy I have left to get me through another day.