Spoken

Peace is somewhere in the middle.  Somewhere between being ruled by my emotions and completely repressing them.  Peace is knowing that nothing I feel is bad.  Not on its own anyway.  But I am not at peace.  I have lost my voice.  I can’t say the things I want to say without crossing some imaginary line I’ve drawn.  And the things I can say seem boring.  So the conversations play out in my head but never get the privilege of becoming words.  Never to be breathed out into eternity.  Never to echo off mountains walls or drift through fields of flowers.

I don’t have my voice.  It has been taken away from me.  I can only say what I’m supposed to say, but I think that’s what got me in this mess in the first place.  Me and this keyboard could set the sky on fire but I’m not allowed to go to the places where the flames come from.  Maybe the inside is better off than it was, but outside still feels like a veneer.  Some façade that hides the me I am and shows the me I’m supposed to be.  I keep it all to myself and don’t feel anxious about it; but I don’t feel honest about it either.

Forgiveness.  I don’t understand it.  It’s something I have no concept of how to do.  Is it just letting go?  Something tells me it’s more than that.  I wonder if I’ve really changed or just bought into some new lie.  A lie that tells me that feeling good is the same as being whole.  An untruth that whispers about how it’s my responsibility to protect myself.  Or am I trying to protect everyone else?  By not saying the words and writing the rest.

It’s like there are two people at war inside of me.  My head calmly asserting what I know is right while my heart screams about what actually is.  They’re almost never on the same page, except for those brief moments when they are holding hands.  And that’s when I know peace.  Peace is somewhere in the middle.  Between the raging heart that has it out for the world and the head that knows cooler heads can prevail.  Headaches and heartache fuse into one unending siren’s song, calling me to do something, anything.  Luring me to a misty, far-away shore where I can say anything and not be ashamed.  I want to go there, but I don’t know if I believe it exists.  I need it to exist.  I need it to be real.  I need to be at peace.  I hope I’m on my way.