The Unspeakable

Today, in my journal, I found myself writing about an ‘unspeakable’ pain I have carried around inside of me for almost ten years. Where do you go with something like that? Something so hurtful, that to unleash it, to open ones mouth and put it into words, is to unleash a torrent of pain and hurt that might have no end and therefore, no healing. What choice is there in that situation? To put it into words is to define it and all the tendrils of its reality and the effects that those realities have visited upon your person.

I think most of us, like I have done, just don’t go there. We don’t speak of it, refuse to think about it, lock it in a box, decorative or not, and place it on the highest, darkest shelf of our inner being. We completely silence it and ourselves. But, is that silence really silent? We may believe, because we must, that that funny little box is hermetically sealed, but it isn’t. The human psyche simply doesn’t operate that way. We may all have those moments when we wish that it did, but it doesn’t. Living organisms (anything that breathes) can not abide a vacuum in their midst. It must be opened and filled with more of self.

So, the tendrils escape, seek paths in the darkness and, I believe, seek light and the heat that is life. Places where they can continue to breathe, live, and ultimately grow to fruition. And just what are the fruits of such labor, in those darkened corners of existence? I found at least three of them in a single page this morning: hesitancy based in fear, distrust of someone I care about deeply, and feelings of both abandonment and betrayal. I guess that’s four, but I’m fairly certain that over the course of ten years, there are probably at least a few more.

So why did I even open this can of worms today? Because it was time, and more than that to do so. Each morning, before I write, I go back and read my last morning’s page/s. I had made a strange statement at the end of yesterday’s scratchings. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and sort of just dangled there at the end, like the physical members of a middle-aged male chorus line with beer guts and too much hair where it shouldn’t be and far too little where it should. It really was too highly visible to ignore.

Being who I am (never more apparent than in those morning escapes), I couldn’t move away without comment and once I started, I filled the entire page describing the incident upon which it had been based. And yes, I was definitely crying by the time I was finished. I was alone, no one saw the tears or need ever know they were present. No one knew, or even had to know what, if anything, had occasioned them. No one, but me. I had brought myself to awareness in five or six paragraphs. That isn’t something to sniff at, remember, all of this had been buried deeply for ten years. It certainly needed an airing, maybe even more so, a throwing over a clothes line and a good beating with a wire whisk.

That may all come tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe next month, or heaven forbid, even ten more years from now. These steps in awareness take time, to settle, be digested, and work their way through the system, in order to bring about the healing they are intended to produce. All I know, is that I have taken that first big huge step, and put into words what had been unspeakable. I have done my part, and whatever happens, will simply happen. But it will only happen at my choosing. That knowledge alone, is worth the few tears I shed.

Yesterday, I wrote here, that a regular writing regimen is the cheapest therapy known to humankind. Then had to face off with my own reality this morning and prove it to myself once again. Don’t you just love it when that happens? I do, because it is the one signal that tells me I am in the right place, doing the right thing. That pleases me, no end. Do you have that? Something that tells you that you are being the best that you can be in any given moment? Something that lets you understand that what you do is essential to further growth and your own personal evolvement? Perhaps a friend that you can invite for coffee and a little venting, a counselor or confessor, a place you can go and scream at the top of your lungs, or hug yourself when no one else is around to offer that?

The only problem with any, or all of those, is that they often can’t be spur of the moment things, immediate to and in the moment. Some of them can be expensive, while others might demand some deliberate preparation and planning. A journal never does. It’s always there, doesn’t get busy talking to another friend and leave you waiting, cooling your heels while the moment and its need disappears into other things, people, or activities. It’s there whenever you need it, want it, or can’t think of another way in which to turn the unspeakable into definitive words, that in turn, allow them to be worked through to resolution. And that is really good therapy.

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