silence is too loud

The silence is too loud. It is. It was. 

The world didn’t know my words. You didn’t know my words. Because I said nothing. 

I couldn’t say anything. 

All these words resided within me and I couldn’t speak. I tried to allow them to breathe, to let them out. But I couldn’t. 

Do you know what you did? You spoke to me and for me. You spoke despite my silence. You spoke because you knew it was necessary, but you also stayed silent so my internal world could catch up to your words.

Your words about me became my own. I realized this today. Today, as I was speaking to someone who has also struggled with silence, I saw myself reflected. And then I saw you and in that moment, I realized what had happened. I realized that the less you’ve been saying out loud, the more I’ve been saying internally. The silence has converted into another silence. But it’s not the same silence. This silence is built upon a stream of flowers, the other upon broken bottles.

Your words now reside within me. I hear you as me, and I feel like it’s me talking. You held my silence in a way no one ever did before. You not only made room for it, you invited it in. 

The patience you gifted me from day one painted the room each time I entered it. If patience had a color, it’d be the color on the walls in whatever room you’re in with me.

I need you to know that your patience has made me better. You’ve given me a gift that I cannot hold just for myself. You’ve given me a gift I want to give away to others. The more I give, the more I have. 

You did this. You allowed this to bloom.

.

That wallpaper is a lie. Built upon more lies you told me and made me feel. It’s all a lie. This wallpaper I want to strip with my bare hands. I want my fingernails to bleed. The blood will represent the pain you inflicted and the expulsion of your lies from my body. I want to be purified. I want to bleed until all the lies flow out of me. I want to begin anew.  

When I was younger, I used to go to sleep and wake up with only one dream in mind. I planned my whole day – every day – around this future goal and what I needed to do to reach it. I poured my daylight, effort, sweat, money, passion, and tears into it. This dream was going to take me away, away from everyone I knew, and away from what I was used to. I didn’t hear anyone who would counter anything related to this dream of mine. I blocked everyone out. Rendering their words silent provided me with an anchor of perceived invincibility so that I could keep going. Today… I was able to open the curtains a bit and realized that perhaps the person I wanted to run away from then was myself. Then… now… and all this time in between. All this time. It’s quite sad actually and it’s also somewhat freeing. That dream I longed for and worked for never came to fruition and recently I’ve found myself replaying the past. While I’ll never be able to chart the course of what never happened or know what could have happened, I do know that the big ego I possessed, my fragile internal state I repeatedly ignored, and continued abuse of alcohol could not have ended well.

Maybe I would have drank the same amount, maybe more, maybe less. There’s no way of knowing. I do know how my life progressed and how much I did end up drinking up until I quit. I know what my drinking patterns became. What my avoidance of the truth took away from me. Recovery, to me, represents what I’ve always wanted but never had. It represents choice, power, and control. As the quiet and the screams inside my mind collide, recovery offers a way out. A way to stop, step back, and look at the bigger picture. The bigger picture of me and my life. It allows time and space for me to turn around and realize that there’s nothing chasing me. That everything is okay and I’m safe.

Recovery allows for quiet reflections and blatant realizations. It allows for me to see people and hear them, maybe for the first time. To allow their words to interact with and impact my psyche and the deepest parts of me. Before… their words got lost on their way to my heart and I never spent time looking for them.

Recovery allows for the night to not feel as dark and the daylight to bring me comfort. The real comfort. I’ve always fought my own self, always felt like I was all alone. Recovery allows me to sit with that small child inside me and tell her that it’s okay and that I see her. I’m not drowning her whispers and whimpers in alcohol anymore. Instead, recovery allows me to open myself to all that she wants to say. Recovery is all I’ve ever been searching for, and of course, never found it at the bottom of any bottle… ever. Because recovery is everything and there’s no way for a bottle to hold everything. Recovery is the re-awakening of my younger self, that pure part of me that believed good things, that woke up and went to bed with the same thoughts of the same dream, that part that would do everything to be better, to practice, to believe that something bigger was coming.

Recovery is the return to the purest parts of myself, now with more knowledge, experience, insight, and empathy. But this time… I’m not fighting for a dream, I’m fighting for my whole life.