An open, ill-formed letter to those I push away.

I sit in an armchair facing sliding glass windows as late afternoon slides into evening. As darkness becomes more prevalent my view of the backyard shrinks until everything is suddenly black and I am left staring at my own reflection, the book I have been reading for the past two hours now abandoned at my side. The romantic sense that I have words to say rushes back, back, back. I grasp them, knowing they may very well be fleeting. I want, especially now, to find the right ones. In the reflection of the glass I can now see my mother sitting on the couch, the lamp beside her glowing a pleasant orange as she reads. My limbs are tucked close together, something in me working on the logic that condensing myself into a smaller space might make life easier to handle. It almost does.

I am a quiet person. Last winter I lost my voice for almost a month; few noticed. The simple fact that I am quiet does not bother me, for I like a fair helping of silence. Beyond the noise level, a legitimate problem lies in the fact that I am apt to take the adage "if you can't say anything nice, don’t say anything at all" to a dangerous extreme. I am so used to measuring words, a master at wringing them until they have lost any possible controversy.

I lied to myself for years, placing a filter on emotion as to cut out access to my own thoughts on difficult matters.

Still now, when I am upset with someone or feel especially useless, I keep quiet. The unsavory thoughts pile up, a wish-wash of what’s true and what may not be, with no outlet. I will be angry with someone and have no palpable reason why, nor the rationale to tell them. I stew.

Those I allow close to me occasionally take a sideways glance and shake me for words, looking to help or state their frustration at my lackluster skills in the field of in-the-moment communication, yet still all I know to do is pull away. I worry so deeply that others have made me periphery in their lives while at the same time I push them back to the fringes of my existence out of fear.

Surely it isn't fair of me to be angry with people, especially for reasons I could never find logic for or fully express to those involved. Maybe I want to find a way to say:

“It feels safest to keep my silence today; my heart hurts and I lack the means to express it with any accuracy. Maybe you said something or didn't say something, nothing blatant enough to warrant a legitimate complaint but a matter enough to pluck a nerve somewhere, and I have no way to tell you.

“I say nothing and hope you will somehow pick up on the fact that this particular distance, this once in a while blankness is inherently different from the tens of other silences we have shared.

“I want to make it your fault. It isn't. But because I cannot make it your fault, I must make it mine, and to amend this requires neutrality I cannot manufacture without making myself blank. I would cry, if I could. I would yell, if I could. I can’t.

“It isn't that you bother me terribly. You don’t. You never do. It has more to do, I think, with my envy of your words. Sometimes you will say simplest of things and I sit here wanting dearly to tell you, without logic or niceties, to please shut up and understand that I am aching with the fact that I cannot find words or, when I do, allow myself the luxury of letting them free.

“I cannot rationalize outwardly expressed anger for myself; somehow silence crept in as the acceptable, only, choice of action available to me.

“The fact of my silence becomes a problem in and of itself, draws questions I am helpless to answer. I don’t know how to say things, period, without risking tremendous guilt. I hold a double standard for myself—maybe I welcome others' complaints and stories so wholeheartedly because I feel so completely useless at putting forward my own.

“I am silent for reasons I am still struggling to bring to the surface. I hope against hope that, in some small way, you will understand.”

The words, stacked as they are now, slightly sicken me; I blot them until the built up anger loses its greasy sheen. They make some sense here, tucked neatly within paragraphs and freed of rough edges.

I don’t know what to make of them.