The Things We Don’t Talk About

I just read the post of a brilliant friend of mine, someone whom I admire for her ability to articulate things I have not been able to. 

She is vulnerable in a way that doesn’t seem possible for me.

And as I write this I sense that may be my cowardice speaking. And do I really care what anyone else thinks of me?

More than I want to admit and probably less than I should.  Perhaps it’s too much ego and not enough courage.  Or a deficit of self-acceptance. 

And so I write in an effort to have the things that contradict themselves in my head make sense on paper.

There are things we don’t talk about; they feel too revealing and once we say the thing there’s no un-ringing the bell. But bells are intended to be rung by those willing to risk being judged. That is, what I think of as brave. And that is what I so greatly admire about my friend. 

And.

The only judgments out there are the ones we carry inside ourselves. 

But in these present bodies, she is a woman and I am a man and men are not given license to speak of their lives with the same degree of vulnerability as women. As a man, part of my purpose is to hold the container for a woman to surrender into.  If I fail to do that I am diminished.  And while we live in a time where, thankfully, there is greater awareness of the masculine and feminine energies in each of us and, with that, the beauty of gender fluidity, there is also a movement back towards polarity, an appreciation for our distinct and complimentary natures. And that has its own challenges. 

And it’s what’s underneath that intrigues me. The dark unseen forces that drive us. The unconscious. The story under the story. And that is the same story whoever you are. 

What she writes about her relationships reminds me of my own. It’s like coming out of a dense fog. “Oh, she gets it.” She’s telling my story. But it’s not at all my story. 

And still so much of it resonates. 

That sense of having failed when you didn’t even know there was a test. Moving through the world hiding your true self so no one can see who you are, thinking you have to apologize for your existence. And being too numb to feel anything. Bearing the emotional weight of others who are afraid of their own emotions and unable to be present with yours. Being stunned into silence. And then projected on.

And mostly having no one to speak to about things you need to speak about, that no one else is talking about, that every human has been through, and everyone knows of and pretends not to, believing they’re the only ones going through them.  

These are things we don’t talk about. 

This is all I want to talk about. 

Because this is how we hide from ourselves and one another.

And where we are is a lonely place when we think, “Am I the only one?”