The Quiet Things Out Loud
I was fully vaccinated yesterday and the giddiness that built up all week extended into my writing. Something popped up every day that made me think, “I want to write about that! What an interesting subject that would benefit from my examination!” (Every sentence this week has ended in an exclamation point.) When the next thing would pop up, I’d think, “Oh this totally beats that ridiculous topic from yesterday, what was I thinking?” What finally flowed from my keyboard, though, was more personal than James Carville living in 1994 and the moral complexities of homelessness.
I’ve been a whirling dervish in most everything lately, plotting out vacations and long weekends and movies and spa visits and my 50th birthday party (coming your way in January 2022; be ready). My oldest daughter got her first vax last weekend and the visible lifting of weight off her shoulders was indescribable. Maybe that’s why I’m so much lighter myself. The boulder we’ve been under is finally shifting enough for us to crawl out. What are we going to find when we emerge? I suspect we’re about to learn some pretty fascinating things about ourselves and our fellow humans.
Last Friday, I had happy hour with my closest girlfriends for the first time in over a year. We were all excited for it of course and fell immediately back into our easy rhythm of fierce support and casual insults only we can make. At a certain point in the evening, I made a sudden, not-at-all-thought-out decision to be honest about some resentment I’d been hanging on to for a while. It was revelatory. It felt fantastic, completely cleared the air, and - most importantly - was easy to do. I’ve never been one to avoid confrontation, but in the Before Times I had to build up to it, work myself up for it. It felt so different this time—imperative but not weighty, acceptable, natural.
There was an article in the NYT yesterday in this vein, How to Make Your Small Talk Big, which for the most part was advice I don’t need. I’m comfortable getting real with people and am more than ready to look people in the face while we talk. I’m so damn happy to be connecting with people again, and after a year like no other, what an opportunity to make those connections even deeper. I did love this passage from it, though:
“Each of us has lost something in this last year, some much more than others, and we are adjusting and grieving in different ways. We are not going to feel better until we grapple with what’s been broken. One by one, in our clumsy, tentative small talk, we are showing each other where the cracks are.”
I don’t think any of us know what’s going to emerge from those cracks. Some of it could be ugly. And some of it may not be received with the love I got from my girlfriends. What’s important to remember is that we’ve learned, in this terrible year, who and what matters to us. Who we want to show our vulnerabilities to. What we want to cling to and what we’re fine letting go of. A big part of all that is, well, just speaking. Saying the quiet things out loud.
There’s this wonderful speech by Audre Lorde that has so many exquisite sentences in it, I want to devour it and make it part of me. Here’s a part for today’s purposes (emphasis my own):
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”
She was addressing the political more than personal, urging women to speak for their own liberation and equality. But it applies in our everyday relationships just as well. The silences you’re sitting on, the emotions you’re tamping down in order to maintain civility—they eventually become your own internal torture. Especially, my god, after sitting alone with ourselves all year. We *need* to say some shit out loud.
I know we’re all retraining ourselves to simply leave the house again. I didn’t know how to order food at happy hour - they don’t have menus anymore! - and was promptly called Grandma. You don’t have to unburden yourself on the first person you see. I just think we have a rare opportunity, one that will likely never come our way again, to open a new page in our notebooks. I don’t want to sit on my silences anymore. Jesus, I’ve been sitting for 14 months.