I was told to be quiet before I could finish the sentence.
It was 4th of July weekend. My parents had been told by a friend’s brother that we met some boys at the movies on a double date. Which wasn’t true. When I went to explain that we just saw them there, I was told to be quiet. They didn’t believe me.
I can’t even count how many of those moments I wasn’t allowed to speak. Feeling the unfairness of the world and tiny amounts of rage building in me. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to share my side of things. Why no one believed me. Why it was always, don’t talk back. Perhaps it was a parenting era of don’t talk back and speak only when spoken to, perhaps it’s just the way things go with girls, but after years of it, I learned, don’t speak.
Unknowingly, I carried the weight of the anger and rage along with me.
Unless I was drinking. The arrival of alcohol brought with it the girl who had been told to be quiet. I could feel myself harden with the first drink. I was the girl who would be across the room from the guys and then suddenly slamming them into a doorway laughing. Pushing people in pools. Saying snarky comments. In my twenties, with my second husband, picking fights. Going to get a water bottle from the fridge, noticing they weren’t labels forward, throwing them over my shoulder at him. This part of me, the girl who wasn’t allowed to talk, was mad. And drinking allowed her to express it.
Quitting drinking closed the door on the part of me that raged for a short time. Honestly, I had entered such a state of resentment. Everything was “it must be nice”, and “why me/why not me?”
Until a few years ago. Something happened, and I can’t say for sure what, but I remember feeling burned up inside, like a bomb was about to go off. I also remember how icky I felt inside.
My stomach felt like a vat of green toxic bubbling goo percolating up from within. It rose into my chest, thick and hot, like it was going to spill over.
I. Did. Everything. To. Resist. It.
Distract myself, take a shower, call a friend. Nothing worked. Finally, I laid down on my floor and just let it take me over. I laid there breathing into every little bit of it as it boiled through my body, watching it and not interrupting it.
The sensation itself didn’t last that long. It certainly didn’t have the repercussions of a wife yelling at me for throwing her husband in the pool with his Rolex on.
Admittedly, with people close to me (like my boyfriend), when there is a breakdown, I’ve noticed ‘my practice’ of using my voice can way overcorrect. I find myself saying, I don’t know what came over me. I’ve had moments where I’ve felt like I’ve blacked out. Emotionally flooded and saying things without a filter. Things that I would have never said before.
For a short time I thought, maybe this is hormones, but I don’t think so. I think this is me finally stepping into the belief that I can say what’s on my mind. Besides, blaming hormones feels disempowering. Just like raging out while drunk did. That version of me was never created by alcohol. She is finally allowed.
So for now, I look for the moments in settings that give me an opportunity to use my voice even though it feels terrifying. Like asking the guy at the gym if he’s using the machine he’s sitting on.
For the girl who was told to be quiet, it feels like the bravest thing she could ever do.
