See me, hear me
January 16th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
(I wrote this with someone in mind but I don’t even know if that person exists. Perhaps I made him up. It seems that I needed the pain in order learn. The pain seemed real but now it’s gone.)
To walk away in the middle of a conversation is to effectively silence a person. Oh, she can talk into thin air and hear her own voice but, without an entity to absorb or even bounce the words off of, the sound she makes is hollow, has no body, no resonance. Another way to silence is to simply dismiss what is being said as gibberish or nonsensical. Or trivialize the importance of an idea or feeling that’s being communicated. Children are often brought under control this way. Let them cry. When they’ve got it out of their systems, they’ll shut up. It is a cruel maneuver to use on someone so vulnerable.
This is what you did the first time, too, when you wouldn’t hear me. When my words seemed to fall out into the room and just lay there not connecting. And I would wonder – What’s wrong with me that I can’t communicate what I feel? You were there, physically, and maybe even heard what I was saying, but you had retreated enough so there was no evidence that what I was saying had substance.
I wrote a story once that kept returning to the flatness of sounds. A woman is dining out and the carpet and table cloth and very atmosphere of the place keep swallowing sound, no resonance is how I put it. Later that evening, back in her hotel room, she tries to tell the man No, I changed my mind, I don’t want this. But her words don’t have substance. He doesn’t hear her because – why? There is no connection between them. He really doesn’t hear because they are not two people together. They are separate, in their own worlds. She created the scene that put her there as much as he did. I have been silenced that way all my life. Silenced by not being heard.
Well, listen to yourself. Hear yourself. If you want people to hear you, you must hear yourself first. See yourself first and then they will be able to see you.
Instead of crying about and explaining not being heard, perhaps I need to concentrate on how it works to connect. What I can do to make myself heard and seen. And how I can hear and see more clearly. Shift my focus. What would I say about me if someone listened? — I want to know you. I want to share whatever time we have joyfully. I want to delight you and I want to be delighted by you and the tender, ephemeral beauty suspended between us, around us. It won’t always be easy or painless but it will be alive and it will have a heartbeat. — If I want that to be what is heard then I must manifest it in my being, in my body. I cannot hide and also be seen. I cannot be quiet and also be heard.
The woman in my story was hiding, was silent so she wouldn’t be seen or heard. She wanted to participate in life but from the safety of a hunting blind. Of course the man did not see her. She wasn’t there. He didn’t hear her because her words came too weak and too late. She was not present enough to speak them loud enough to hear.
Always, I am only partially here, not giving everything in order to save myself for another day. Keep some in reserve, just in case. It’s no way to live.
From what place do I want to speak? From the chord that vibrates when it encounters goodness, vulnerability, the beauty of another person. From the thunder that resounds in my body at the sight of a mountain, a lake, a hundred year old tree. From the hushed place that flutters at the sight of dew on spring grass. Please let me speak from that place. Is this a prayer I ask of myself? Allow me to lay the shield down. Allow me to know I am heard. Allow me to be present.
It weird how the mind/heart works. Emotion crosses the boundary of time as if time doesn’t exist and breaches the limitations of finite form that our intellect perceives as discrete. My rational mind says I’m crazy to equate the deep rejection and loss I felt years ago to an episode forty years later with someone who is not tied in any solid way to my life, who feels little connection to the person I am. But my heart doesn’t care a bit. It finds what it needs to help it understand and heal. It found you even though it knew the experience would be wrenching, would rekindle the enormous feelings of insecurity and sadness that lay buried for so many years. It found you so I could recreate what I felt so long ago and figure out how to come out of hiding.
