speak

Everywhere you go people are talking

Talking on a city bus with a friendly stranger sitting next to you

Talking and laughing with a best friend on a summer afternoon

Talking in school walking down the halls, calling to friends

I however, have an empty history of silence

When I open my mouth nothing ever comes out the way I want it to and I know nobody can hear me

I think that’s the worst part, knowing I could speak, knowing what I could do, knowing what I used to be able to do before I was told I shouldn’t

I don’t talk, I can’t talk to a friendly stranger on a bus, or yell down the hall to a friend I see

 Talking with someone in a social situation is like walking five miles in a dry dessert on burning coal to me

You don’t understand how it physically strains me to open up to you, how every word to a new person is like running a marathon over and over

You couldn’t understand how it takes everything in my power not to scream at how wrong you are when you give me a complement

How hard it is to accept a complement

 Think of it like there is a twisting, binding brick wall wrapped around me, but I’m the only one who can see this wall, everyone else thinks I’m making a bigger deal out of something that isn’t 

Isn’t it funny how much harmful words from the people you care about and look up to can affect you

I want to go back to the person who came up with the sickly saying that “words can’t hurt you” and say but what about me, and everyone else who has become a victim of cruel taunting phrases and long painful insults that never seem to end like shattered glass on the ground you try to clean it up but always step on that one piece you missed over and over again

Even when it does end, you still live with it, with every one person who calls you beautiful you remember the 10 who said they would kill themselves if they looked like you

Every time someone tells you your worth it you go back to the times when the people who were supposed to be your best friends screamed about how worthless and useless you are

Or how in grade school I had my very own water fountain all to myself because nobody else wanted to use the one I did, I’m simply to disgusting

You don’t just forget things like that

One day I will find the power to speak

One day I will look back on

 every single one of these days that are like stumbling through quick sand and the more I fought back the farther I sunk, I will look back to these days and I will speak

I will look back on all the moments of stuttering and holding my tongue and shaking after asking for a pencil and I.  will.   Speak!

Like an earth shattering roar my voice will be the loudest and you will finally hear me, because maybe then I will let you hear me, because maybe I will finally feel like I am worth listening to

All these thoughts that I don’t have the right to feel like this because so many people have it worse

All the numbing imposter phenomenon and feeling of fraudness and fakeness

I will push it all away as I speak and use my voice for something other than whispering

Right now, writing is my voice, how I speak, writing is how I speak and truly mean something

But maybe one day I will be able to get onto a stage and share my writing like I have always wanted

and maybe one day you will finally hear me speak