Dead Souls Tell No Tales

I began writing this blog and Big Butch Barks Back two years ago for several reasons. Not only did I want a safe place to keep and share my poetry and musings, I hoped that by somehow chronicling my struggles with panic, agoraphobia, religious abuse, and being queer, I could help others, and somehow, myself.  I wanted to create a beautiful place of peace, love, and acceptance for my own soul and anyone else who wanted to go along for the ride.

Some of what I have written IS peaceful ( and I hope beautiful), but in looking back at the two blogs, it is full of lots of hurt and anger. I am proud in many ways that it does indeed show me as one who has a heart that wishes to do so much good, yet it demonstrates my brokenness all too clearly.

There are long breaks in my writing, particularly in the past year, partly because I started a full time job, but mostly because I have made myself numb in order to cope. Dead souls tell no tales you know. Its amazing how the brain works that it allows one to go to a job, work the entire day, interacting, cleaning, laughing, and talking, but inside is practically nothing.

Each time I am alone, there is an emptiness, a loneliness. There is a silence inside. I don't hear me.

I imagine in a cold dark body of water and above me is ice. I'm trying to get the attention of the people standing upon the ice. Save me!!! Cut a hole! I can't breathe!!! No one hears me. I try to beat against the ice, but the water slows my movement. The only sound is the tiny echo my fist makes against the ice and the sound of my own desperation.

Silence. Silence.

"Be silent so that you may hear the whispers of God" my blog says. It is where the title of Whisper Creek gets its inspiration. Yet if I cannot hear my own internal screams, how do I hear a whisper?

It seems I have not only cut off the ears of my soul, but the cords which utter the cries. An emotional and spiritual deaf/mute. The times I feel a tingle in my heart and a reminder of my own joy sneak up on me and I remember, if but a moment, that I am alive. And alive means to FEEL. There are times I overwhelmed with goodness, yet when the gates of emotion open up, all the bad rolls in too. So I close the dam.

And under the water I go again. Looking up to the ice. My fist knocking and beating with the echoes of desperation the only sound.