Growing up I was the “good girl”, the one who always played by the rules. It was good for my family and even better for the education system. There was a small caveat however. I didn’t speak in school.
Selective mutism they called it. The fancy word for the healing response my body chose to show me I needed to change certain aspects of my life. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to speak, it was that no matter how hard I tried nothing came out.
Not words.
Not a sound.
Not a voice.
Nada.
Zero.
I held onto those words for a while and started to identify with them. One day I decided to drop them, they were too heavy to carry and I never really liked those words anyway. I wasn’t like I was selectively choosing to be mute.
The only time Sara and spoken word would be in the same sentence is on an opt-out form. Dare I say, public speaking was my absolute nightmare. My teacher at the time and fellow classmates would pepper me questions in light of attempts to converse with me. Let’s just say their efforts were greatly unsuccessful and not appreciated (they didn’t get the verbal response they were looking for). Instead they got what later became coined the “goat face” where I would stare blankly into the oblivion .
Unbeknownst to them all, I was observing everything. How people articulated themselves when expressing different emotions. How people carried themselves in a crowd versus when they were alone. Did they offer a hand when it was needed but not necessarily asked for? What tools did they reach for to soothe themselves? Some days warranted a drawing while others called for words. At first, my observations were reflective of what I physically saw in others. After some time, I became interested in what lived beneath the surface layer of all beings. I called it THE SECRET GARDEN. The secrets, beliefs, thoughts, and emotions buried deep inside. Invisible to most outsiders, yet very visible to me. Everyone had something to hide. And what was hidden varied person to person.
As I got older I grew fascinated with the unseen and the unspoken. Why did humans choose to hide and protect a part of themselves? What was I hiding and why was I hiding it? If we lived in absolute truth there would be nothing to hide. Truth is we spend most of our life putting on a performance. For a plethora of reasons, unique to the individual. Myself included. And boy is it exhausting.
So, how could I consider myself a writer? I don’t have a degree in English or literature or a humanities sub-discipline for that matter. Nor am I a NYT best-selling author with a bookshelf filled with my published works (*not yet anyway 🙂 ). I am a human experiencing life to the greatest capacity I can. My physical reality is my paper and I am the ink. My desire is to share my truths from lived experiences and to encourage everyone to write.
Write your life the way it should be written.
100 % true and by you.
