Swallowing my Voice
Day 5 of my personal write every day challenge. Only 360 days to go….
I know that writing every day is supposed to be the only way to train your brain to write every day… on demand… because it becomes habit and ritual and expectation.
But it sucks. I’m tired of it. Already. I feel like I have nothing to write. I tried to do a writing prompt (post set to private) and it was so miserable and contrived, I took an hour to write 6 lines… and I hate it (thus set to private) and I’m depressed. Apparently I just can’t write to prompts. At all.
I feel like this post has to be about something… tell a story… give an insight… be… interesting in some way (failing). Even if it’s just interesting to me (failing harder). But I just feel so tired and so drained and so… disinterested.
The blogger I wrote about a couple of days ago. The one who posted a “share your writing with other writers” forum. The one in which I couldn’t participate because I’m just a shadow human, not a real, full whole human… He posted again because only four people responded to the first forum (it’s going to be a monthly thing.)
And I wanted to respond to his disappointment in the lack of turnout. I wanted to explain why I hadn’t participated even though I want to. But then, I couldn’t even say the REASON I couldn’t participate because, not only can I not share my closeted self, I can’t let anyone know I even HAVE a closet.
I have to pretend to have other reasons.
And I find myself so wanting to simply speak my truth.
And I wonder if anyone else (who isn’t/hasn’t been closeted about a major aspect of their identity) even realizes the kind of stress and pressure it is to constantly swallow your own voice.
I don’t know if I even realized the extent of it until recently. And I’ve been doing it all my life.
I’ve had people tell me that my situation isn’t that much different from anyone else… everyone has aspects of their lives they keep private… it’s just normal. I’m overdramatizing my situation.
But I don’t agree with them.
There is a difference between not talking about things because people would react with, “Ew! Overshare!” but which they mostly do (similar) things themselves.
And not talking about things because people would react with, “Freak! Suspicious! Dangerous!”
There’s an assumption that most people have sex lives. There’s an assumption of a range of activities most people might get up to in the bedroom… There’s a shared consciousness around it. People not talking explicitly about their sex lives in public isn’t keeping a secret that they can’t let anyone know… it’s simply not explicitly describing what everyone already knows.
That is a very different scenario to being UNABLE to share aspects of not only my sex life, but the very nature of my entire relationship, even the fact that I HAVE a relationship (or two), and not because I’m private, but because I would literally risk my and my partners’Â reputations, careers, and potentially freedoms (if the current dictatorship continues course) by revealing even the nature of our relationship, let alone intimate details.
That’s not at all the same as not telling your coworkers how you like your toes sucked.
And I am really really irritated that some people still tell me that it is.
