Voice

“You’re telling me this broad walked around with all of these dudes and SHE didn’t write a book about it? No, don’t believe it.”

Maybe I’m not the only one that feels like my words have been stifled. Perhaps my voice isn’t the only one silently screaming from within to finally let it out. Sometimes, though, it feels like I’m alone in this. If you experience it too, I imagine that there are days where you feel just as isolated in your overwhelming need to speak.

The funny thing? Some days, despite the ever growing urge to let them out, I simply can’t find the words. Occasionally it’s that no word feels quite powerful enough to match the magnitude of the situation, of the emotion behind it. Other times, it feels like trying to paint a picture with a wet brush and no paint. If I get strokes out fast enough, I start to see an image coming into view but if I turn away just a moment too long to rewet my brush, to catch my breath, all of the progress seems lost. It’s like I’m running in place. Some days, I just feel too defeated to speak.

Encouragement is a funny thing, though, because it’s almost like it pulls that courage up and out of nowhere. A gentle nudge from the right soul, soft enough to be considered just a touch, and pull me out of the deepest hole that I’ve dug for myself and remind me that there’s light again. I find that if you hold on to hope long enough, if you just keep having faith that things will fall into place even when it seems impossible, that strength attracts miracles.

I know, I know. Miracle sounds like an over-exaggeration but I can assure you that it’s not. I believe a miracle and a movie moment are one and the same. We live in a society prone to believing in the same but calling them by different names, as if we don’t already have enough wedges between us. So when a moment is so intense that it feels surreal, magical, and leaves you wanting to question how but just being grateful for being – it doesn’t matter what you call it, it doesn’t change it’s nature.

I wonder if the same can be said about people. I recall sitting in psychology class in my sophomore year of high school. I can hear an explanation about how labeling theory claims that if you call someone something long enough, enough times, they eventually will start to become it. Does this mean, depending on what I’m called, my nature will change? Hardly. The truth is, depending on what you call me has almost always been directly correlated to what parts of myself I’m willing to show you.

My nature isn’t changed, I am still me – I am still capable, loving, brave, strong, powerful, and bold. Sometimes I’ve survived by agreeing, though. I’ve gotten by through not ruffling feathers, laying low, gathering the scraps as I watched the predators fight. I also watched the woman in the corner that was twirling to the tune the angry footsteps beat into the ground. In the other corner a man laid out canvas to catch the splatter of the bloodshed. It fell in intricate patterns that looked a lot more like flowers than the pain it came from.

Those two made me realize that I didn’t have to hide amongst the stampede of battle to find scraps, nor did I have to join into a war I didn’t want to fight. There was no shame in finding yourself in a corner, away from the chaos, so that you can allow your true nature to come out.

Some days, I still feel like there are no words to convey what I mean. Other days, I wonder if maybe my words just don’t mean as much as those around me. The truth creeps in to remind you to be brave in the most unlikely of times, though. Laying in bed, the voice of influence interrupts my post-sarcasm laughter. “I’m not rewriting the story, I’m just pointing out that there were parts left out. Take Mary Magdalene for example. You’re telling me this broad walked around with all of these dudes and SHE didn’t write a book about it? No, don’t believe it”

I should have known that message would never come to me as a gentle whisper in my ear. That’s hardly what I’m receptive to and my nature can’t just be changed to fit that vision. So when early morning jokes between the sheets snap me back to reality, I realize that what I needed to take from that is that there will be enough people out there trying to quiet my voice. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be heard, or that I should allow that to discourage me. Sometimes the most powerful players are the ones out there on the side lines, twirling to the beat and collecting splatter.

So call me what you will but know that I will still share my words anytime someone is willing to listen and I will never change my nature to fit a label. What’s in you, beneath the labels and titles? How do you honor that person? Do you hear the whisper of encouragement that sneak their way into your days? The best thing you can do is trust yourself enough to listen to them. Trust yourself enough to know that beneath what everyone else says is true about you, you are the only one that really knows. Listen to you.

Much love, until next time.