I've never been the best at expressing myself, but it's not because I don't have anything to say. My ideas paint every corner of my mind, and decorate the pages on which my pen darts, but when I open my mouth, I don't make a sound. It's not because I don't want to, it's because I can't. I've never fully understood the language of speaking to another person. I overcompensate my meanings with too many words, because the one thing I desired to share didn't have an impact. These words felt powerful in my head, allowing me to hold it up in triumph as I had finally put into the human vocabulary a feeling my soul had been holding onto for too long.
But it wasn't enough.
And that's when I felt myself start to crumble, explaining away this ridiculous notion that just tumbled out of my mouth. Nothing more than a random assortment of mismatched letters to stuff under my bed and out of the light.
I try to think of ways for you to understand. Pictures, descriptors, something to make you feel the way I do. But you don't. And you can't. Not when there's an absence of empathy too large to heal with a bandaid. A gorge separating our understanding.
I'll never forget when they couldn't understand me. But it's not that they didn't want to, just that they couldn't. Our people languages weren't the same. And that's okay. It's okay if the gorge is a little rocky around the edges. It's okay - just build a bridge. Connect the two. We can make this work.
Until the spark alights, and the bridge goes up, cinders falling away into the darkness below. The beautiful bridge I was spending time and strength on, gone. They didn't want to connect. They didn't want me.
I tried to be okay with that. But there's a point in which you take too many arrows, pulling the bloody tips one-by-one out of your back. The open wounds bleeding and festering, not bothering to close up as the poison-laced arrows plunge into them again and again.
They showed me that they didn't care, didn't have the desire to attempt communication. It's not that they couldn't, but they didn't want to. We had to resources to build a bridge, but when the opposite side becomes your enemy, no longer hiding their attacks or pulling their punches,
the walls go up, strong enough to withstand the rain of arrows and terrors and stronger still to never come down again.
