I open my mouth
And the world tumbles out
I cannot stuff it back in
It’s out now, rolling
Holding on to the sides of its rounded shape
I cling, fingernails rasping
I lose my grip
It slips
Running over me
I watch it turn over and over
Far below it tumbles onto the sharp rocks of another’s experience
I watch it shatter and separate
Pieces ricocheting, striking the air
My world falls apart
I feel the tremors of my heart
As it is decimated
*Have you ever had one of those conversations where every word feels vital?
IF not, you are a coward, for life and loving and relationships provides us with many opportunities where such conversations need to be had
The space into which you place each of these important vessels, that carry so much meaning, is dangerous. Your nerves are alive with your inadequacy as a speaker to deliver just the necessary thing.
Thing?!
What better word, surely there is one
Thing?
It will do
My mind grasps at air trying to pull into being just the very “thing” you need. And yet, with hollow eyes, empty of energy from a storm tossed night, you watch it all unravel.
What I wanted to say is turned and twisted so sharply as it is received that I experience verbal whiplash.
The sound of my own words hitting the windscreen of another persons experience is excruciating
I’ve perhaps chosen wrongly, even with the greatest of love and care
The tension in my neck and shoulders feel like I’ve been in a car wreck.
But I take a breath, and keep going.
*We cannot, provoke the response we desire in another person, without a high degree in emotional competence and probably a decent dose of manipulation
The first I lack, though I’m learning
The second, I don’t agree with using
With the greatest of precision placement and wishful thinking, still words will not always do what is required
We can pray and hope and will it to happen. Gather our useless auditory measures, line them all up and make them deliver
Yet how it lands
How it is responded to
That is the one thing we cannot control
And yet these conversations need to be opened. Like boxes with bombs in them they will go off anyway. There is no way to defuse the bomb without opening the box – you have to open the box.
So with shaking fingers and a loving and courageous heart, you walk forward and begin cutting tape. Tick tick tick.
Listen to me, have the conversation. Begin. It’s the only way through. Once out of the box, bombs don’t go back in. Instead, they are painstakingly defused.
You may very well stuff up, stumble as you weigh out your words like carefully plucked and snipped fusewires
And yet already somehow, it is becoming clearer what must be done
The conversation begun, is so much better then that cancerous lump, that spreads in your chest.
Be brave
Begin
Don’t stop half way
Continue
All the way in
All the way through
We think we need to find the right words – that’s not true. We put so much weight on the words. But in the end it’s not words that get through. It is the truth. And it is the truth that obliterates that mass on your chest and let’s you breathe again. Not words.
Oh and by the way – experts are rare and a book won’t teach you. We are not normally raised to be conversational experts. My mother placed great import on not starting conversations that may have a bad outcome. So truths went unfolded, issues tidied away into the back of the cupboard. It was detrimental for her health. My father was brilliant at provoking and teasing but never dealing.
I tend to blow up things because I can’t hold all the pressure in my heart. It’s terrifying, but I finish what I start. Even if I begin badly. And as Winston Churchill reminds me in a quote which has become a wall to lean on, when I’m backed into it.
“The truth is like a lion, set it free and it will defend itself”
Winston Churchill
It might be a hard day. But they end the same as good days, and often in fact, turn into them.
Header picture: fence post taken by me. Fence posts are each integral to the strength of a boundary. Choked with sharp wire, it reminded me of a throat when constricted. That’s why I chose it for this post.
