Pretty words: what is acceptable when speaking YOUR truth?

By Mariann Martland

My heart began bleeding out onto your blank page by your invitation. I did not use grand words.

They were not pretty words. But what I spoke was real. It was true. The most real thing I had ever said to that day. I had reached into my soul under the brightest moon. That moonlit night shone beauty and inspiration.

The content might not have been beautiful on reflection, it may have been black and dark and painful, but there was beauty in its expression.

I thought you would understand. I thought you would grab my words and breathe them in as if they were the only air left to breathe in the world.

I thought you would hear my cry for help: for someone to say something so I knew I was not alone, for someone to reach out in a way that felt equally poetic to nurture my failing spirit, to hold my quivering hand.

And when you did not give me comfort, when you brushed aside my life as though it was nothing, I excused you.

I told myself, “She is busy, she has troubles of her own, she did hear me but just doesn’t know how to express it.”

I told myself this over and over and I did so to protect you; to keep your brilliance shining as brightly in my world as it had before this day.

You were the first person I chose to bare my soul to. You knew this. You asked for it. I had responded to your call for me to share my truth, my life.

So that in that moment when all I could do was this, I spoke out every part of my world as I knew it then to create a map so you could begin to walk with me. A map of my history, of my life, with all its color and shade, just like you had asked me to do.

Whilst you did not flinch or deny my words, you did not nurture my soul. You did not do what you promised. You did not stay.

You left. You left me alone. Naked. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But I excused you.

I told myself, “She is busy, she has troubles of her own, she did hear me but just didn’t know how to express it.”

I told myself this over and over. Though it was not just to protect you. It was also to protect myself and my world.

I needed to tell myself that you had not run away at the first sign of my ugly parts. I needed to tell myself that you really did hear my call but you had more than enough to listen to elsewhere, so it wasn’t personal to me that you silenced my voice.

I needed to tell myself that you were still the beacon of strength and hope that had once lit my path into healing and that you would continue to be. I needed to do all this so I could keep myself safe; so I could keep my truths safe.

And then tonight I heard another speak to you with less feeling, with less detail, with less pain in her eyes and colour to her picture than I had done all those days before. You responded with such heart. You took her in your arms, comforted her and validated her hurt, her life, her truth.

It was so right you did this for her. Part of me loved you more for doing so. But in that moment, I saw our moonlit night more clearly than ever before. My revelation: you may not have physically run from my dirty secrets, but you made me feel like you did.

You made me feel like I should not have spoken, like I should have kept my secrets hidden. You made me feel dirty. Like my truth was not good enough for you or it was not the truth you wanted to hear.

You made me feel more unsafe than I had when my secrets were secret, when my truths were made up of lies.

Your beauty still shines. It always will. But never quite as brightly now. And I will not rely on it as much as I once did. You took that from me.

But you did teach me what is not acceptable to me. You taught me that there are others who can hold me in my realness, in my rawness, with much greater ease and with much more love and acceptance than I ever felt from you. And I have felt this since.

Between that moonlit night and my revelation I have felt this from another. Since my revelation I now know I will never accept the dismissal of my truths again, particularly when you, the dismisser, coax me into the telling.

So I thank you. I thank you for allowing me to begin to unravel. And I thank you for allowing me to see what it means to speak my truth.

My words may not be pretty enough for you, but they are true and they are mine.

 

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