Needing to Open Up After a Long Silence

It might come as a surprise to those who read this blog that I don't talk very much. Especially not on a personal level. Yes, I do hear all those defibrillators charging up, actually. Thank you. There's my official shock and awe campaign of the day.

I barely use my voice these days, except to sing along to music or talk to my ferrets. My daughter doesn't talk much, or want to listen to me babble about idiotic things, and who could blame her, so I'm a bit surprised I still have a voice every time I hear it issue from my mouth. It's kind of like a dog farting and waking himself up.

I talk about my life a lot in this blog, or should I say 'type a lot', since it requires zero vocalization on my part. Well, except for the occasional yelling I do at the screen when Blogger decides it just doesn't want to do what I'm telling it to do. Yes, I'm one of those people. Inanimate objects are always the biggest focus of my occasional outbursts.

So, back to the point. I stopped talking, verbally, about anything personally important a long time ago. It very recently occurred to me that this might be a problem I'm having with someone. This person once said they didn't know anything about me, causing my jaw to drop perilously close to my navel. Not attractive. The jaw drop, I mean. The navel is none of your business.

There I was thinking my life is an open book almost, but I've just realized that it really isn't. I say what I want to say on here, but it certainly doesn't encompass the entirety of my life. There are things I keep private, the vast majority being names and identifying details about people. Not just for their embarrassment, but my own. Still, I say a fair bit.

It's in my 'real life' that I forget that these people may not have read my blog entry, and that just maybe they'd prefer to hear about something from me personally. They must have figured out at one point that it's just not that personal to read about a friend's life online. If you have to go to those length to learn about someone, it becomes too much effort to bother.

Okay, I get it. To those of you who do know me on a personal level, ask for the dirt now. I dare ya! Be careful what you...yeah, yeah, you get it now, don't you? Mostly I just feel that I give people more information than what they're asking for, holding them hostage by tongue...so to speak. I mean, if you read my blog it's at your own discretion how much information you really want. If you're stuck in a room with me, trying to be polite while garbled verbiage spews all over you, you probably won't be enjoying the onslaught.

However, if there can be too much of a good thing, and the good thing part is debatable, there can certainly be too little of the aforementioned good thing. How the hell does one learn to talk about their life to someone when they've forgotten how? I mean, I understand that sometimes a person wants to actually hear me informing them of the goings-on of my current events, before the rest of the world gets to slaver over the details...and I know you 'slaverers' are out there...you know who you are, even if I don't. Who are you?

It's rude when it comes right down to it. I've been rude. Of course, nobody accuses me of being polite, least of all myself, but rude is different and unacceptable. What's even worse is exclusion when you publicly disclose details of your life, and then don't even bother to tell a friend anything about it. Either inadvertently because you forgot you didn't actually say anything to them about it, or because you just didn't bother, it doesn't matter. It's still worse than rude. It's a bit mean. It just might be that there's an underlying reason for being mean, and I don't realize I'm feeling that way.

To be honest, I think that's a part of it for me. I might be feeling like I'm not getting enough sharing, without realizing that in order to get you gotta give. Part of me thinks I'm sharing too much the way I used to, instead of sharing too little. It's weird how the little insecurities pop up at bizarre times. I'm nothing like the person I used to be when people complained that I talked too much, but part of me is very afraid that I am.

It occurs to me that it's probably deeper than that, though. My whole childhood I knew I didn't matter. Nothing I said mattered to anyone, nothing I did, not even my life. This isn't the typical whining of a kid that felt misunderstood. This is the statement of a woman who suffered a great deal of abuse at the hands of people who were obligated to protect her, and who was thrown to the wolves by her own mother. I simply didn't matter.

As tough as I may be these days, things like that don't ever completely leave you. You face them over and over again, even when you don't realize that's what you're doing. After years of beating it into submission, the pummeling you give it is more or less automatic, but you're still doing it. I don't feel sorry for myself, so I sure as hell don't want the sympathies of others. What I went through made me who I am, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

You know you've mostly healed when you realize that you would choose to go through it all exactly the same way, if it meant you would end up exactly where you are. Many would think I'm not in a good place, personally, but I think I am. Emotionally I'm stronger than I've ever been, and I think the vulnerability I'm able to feel has a great deal to do with strength. Allowing yourself to care and feel less than your strongest all the time, suggests that you know you're strong enough to pull it all back in later if you have to. You're strong enough to risk it all just for hope. You're strong enough to hope for something more once again. Just the hope is a huge risk to your emotional well-being. Nothing beats people down, and makes them suffer quite like hope.

Just admitting to myself that I might want something again, something powerful, something that could hurt me, is a huge deal for me. It brings back a dream I had a while back. The intensity of feeling I described in my blog the day I awoke from it could easily smack me in the face at this point, when, at the time of the dream, I had no reason to think there was a chance of it appearing. It's worth it, though, even at the risk of pain or having to switch it off again. Feeling it again is sufficient to tell me something about the state of my heart and mind. I can still feel. Something for which I can only be grateful, whatever the outcome.

The little piece of me that I reserved from childhood, that nobody touched back then, the part that I thought had been destroyed, was only slightly mauled. By a polar bear. In the Arctic. Then smacked around by the flippers of a baby seal for good measure. The beaver couldn't make the trip.