For years I have been promising myself that I will learn to shut up. You see, I have this horrible, pathological need to confess everything. I hold on to things for as long as I can and then they come spilling out in a chaotic rush of emotion and crazy. It's like a verbal manifestation of an ugly cry. Not cute. Or remotely sane.
I've recently realized that I don't want to shut up. Why shouldn't I speak my mind? What am I so afraid of?
Today I finally verbalized something that I've been thinking for years and something else that has been rattling around in my head for a couple of months. And you know what? I feel better. So. No more keeping my feelings inside. No more fear. No more emotional hoarding.
I feel invincible. That's the secret I've been carrying around for years. After all of what happened in Arkansas and all of the shit with my father and all of the hours, days, weeks, months I spent wanting, trying, willing myself to die, I survived. And then my brother died. Right when everything was turning around for him. So, now, there is no way I can die. I've taken just enough psych classes to know that this mentality is a reaction to my grief. But I believe that God, the universe, whatever couldn't be so cruel as to have forced me to live for no reason. He couldn't be so cruel as to take two of my mother's children, two of my sister's siblings.
And now that I've verbalize this, I want to shout it out for the world to hear. I am alive! I feel celebratory about this for the first time ever. Celebratory and... defiant? I'm going to take this life that has been thrust upon me and live it. No more hiding, no more giving in, no more shutting up, no more fear.
