Learning To Scream

By all accounts, my childhood was quiet. I was an only child and naturally attuned to silence. My parents weren't exactly regular chatterboxes either. They were always the ones who asked people to be quiet in church and at the movies. Plus, we lived in an apartment building where loud noises after 9:00 p.m. were reported. Quiet developed such a premium in my life.

I'm learning of its adverse effects lately. The solitude of my upbringing didn't really help me develop much of a voice. I am still soft spoken to this day. Often my kids ask me to repeat myself because they can't hear me from my lofty perch. And not having a sibling to argue with, to develop difference with more sharply, leads to a vocal box in a degree of atrophy. I know I'm not completely stunted. When comfortable, I am overly chatty, a crude compensation for my initial silence. But often the strength and conviction that colors others' speech at the appropriate moments is absent from my own. My mind is often a middling soup of a number of feelings and thoughts I am unable to articulate, unable to completely explore and trust.

There used to be a point where I could to some degree. Until last night, I had mostly forgotten that time. But in a rare moment of silence in my house, I dug in old files in the goals of organization and found a revival of spirit that might help me organize much more than the system of files on my computer. In the mix of old poems, musings, and random postings, I remembered a me who was just as unsure, just as confused, continually questioning. Certainly though, that me was unafraid of those questions or the answers or non-answers that returned. And that me just plugged along regardless. The tragedy is that I went nowhere. An endless circle like the Exodus.

But that ends now. Later you will see postings on this site that were previous to this date because I have been storing all this expression for no reason whatsoever. And its been holding me down. I haven't been asking questions. I haven't been challenging myself. I haven't been growing in any direction. This has been a stone that has slowly been creeping but I am praying that this is the beginning of momentum that will be unstoppable