Note to Self (42) To the world of silence

I have been walled for too long in a world of silence, where my words stayed shut behind the door to my soul. I pushed them away as if forgetting about them might make them disappear, but they remained, looming, swelling in my wounds like a putrefied disease. I smelt the rotting flesh but ignored all the warning signs. I wanted to keep them to myself, because it was best this way, I thought.

I believed it would save me, not to say anything. I realize now how wrong I have been. These words of fury rushed too fast out of my brain to spill all over my lips, smearing them with horrors I didn’t know existed. All the sorrow and the pain oozed out of my brain and leaked onto my body like a slimy substance that could not be washed off. I tried to hide in my own denial, burying myself under a mountain of lies, but like all appearances, the curtain finally fell and revealed the ugliness that lied beyond my stage.

I fled and disregarded it until I could not bear it anymore. The monster of all my fears was standing next to me, his stench invading my space, finally forcing me to purge the sickness I so often ignored. My eyes opened and I stared in the dark. My mouth started murmuring a prayer, asking for forgiveness.

“My sins are too awful.” I thought. “I’ve caused so much hurt around me.”

The darkness persisted, pushing me to search for an exit. As I touched with my fingers the walls of the chamber where I was kept prisoner, I prayed again. Words continued to pour. I suddenly felt the cold metal of a lock in my hands, but I didn’t have a key. I squatted on the floor and cried, powerless to find a solution to my own misery.

I didn’t want to admit that I had been lying to myself. I didn’t want to pierce through the darkness to reach the light of truth. I lived like this for years, falsely hoping that I would someday bring order to my inner chaos.

I could still feel the coldness of the cage surrounding me, memories hitting me like bricks thrown by an angry mob. “I know I’ve sinned. I know what I’ve done and I feel horrible because of it. Don’t you understand? I am guilty here, I am the bad person. Now kill me. Stop the torture and take me.” I screamed. I begged them not to spare me, but they let me live.

I woke up one day, mentally exhausted and weary, and my body didn’t respond to me. In addition to being totally paralyzed, I felt weak. I could not go on like this anymore. There was no way I could find peace if I kept playing this game with myself. Who was I fooling? I was never meant to experience such hell.

I vomited my words with all the anger I had in me. Then, when I was done, I cried. It took me days, weeks, months to overcome my suffering. I banged at the door of my prison, bruised my legs and my arms, tore my shirt and screamed until I had no voice left. I felt like an animal waking up from a long painful sleep, and I desperately wanted out.

One day, the darkness finally subsided when I opened my eyes and saw the intense brightness surrounding me. The prison was gone, but my pain remained. So I took a pen, and I wrote. I spilled on paper all the words I could not speak, liberating myself little by little from all the lies I told.

My world of silence died before me as my soul slowly healed, every day at a time, still hurting when I remember the voice of my jailer yell in the distance: “You’re a liar, and you’re a cheater. Everything that you say is a lie. Your mouth speaks evil. You should die.” I put my hands on my ears and I keep writing, until the voice stops speaking to me. My journey is not over yet, but I’m gradually getting out, crawling from the darkness into the light, far away from this world of hatred where I shall never return.