Speak No “Evil”

For years I hardly spoke at all.  As a pre-teen, I realized that it was pointless to speak.  My abusive parents were going to twist my words or ignore me anyway.  My best hope was to be invisible.  (This will circle back to acceptance as well. 😉 )  I got the impression that everything I said was wrong.  Speak no evil – therefore speak NOTHING – became my means of survival.  Around this time, my mother started calling me the “ice princess.” 

To this day, I struggle to speak very often.  I’ve always been able to write coherently, but if you heard me speak you might not think I was capable of writing so well.  Sure, my speaking has improved, but I still have those days where I struggle to finish a sentence without trailing off, because I simply can’t get the last words out.  If speaking the right words is important enough to me, you can be sure that something really bizarre will come out of my mouth.  Like… when my godfather (and much loved uncle) died, I immediately dialed my aunt to offer condolences.  My cousin picks up the phone and inexplicably I say, “What?  You’re not happy?”  **headdesk**  That is NOT what I had planned.  That is nowhere near what I wanted to say.  My cousin and aunt have known me since I was born, so they knew it was just another one of my weird moments to roll their eyes at… but still… I am so tired of people giving me THAT LOOK whenever my mouth has decided to say really bizarre things that were no where near my intention.  Thank goodness for ritalin.  Since ritalin, these occurances are far more rare, but it’s still a sore wound for me, as you can see. 

I remember how after years of not speaking, because it was pointless, I forgot how to speak.  I spoke very rarely and when I did, I usually spoke vaguely – Yes, no, maybe, that sucks, whatever, etc.  It felt like I was pulling teeth to get out anything more than that.  Sometimes I felt like I was gagged and simply COULD NOT  speak hardly anymore.  My verbalizing suffered so much that eventually it even became hard for me to write… which really started to distress me.

Lucky me, I found a great therapist in the summer of 2002.  She has saved my life… and so has EMDR (a particular trauma treatment).  Add the meds to the things I learned in therapy and you have a me that can function pretty darn well nowadays.  I never thought I’d be so…. functional… ya know? 

To link this back to acceptance… do you ever feel like it is pointless to keep speaking, because no one is going to hear your HAES or acceptance speech the way you intended it anyway?  Most likely, it will be ignored, laughed off or labelled dangerously naive outside of the fatosphere and niches like it.  I remember that for a long time, even when I could speak fairly well about most topics, I still could hardly put words together to explain HAES type ideas.  I was so out of practice, because I had stopped speaking up as I was tired of being ignored or being told how weird I am.  Sure, I do speak up a lot today.  I have my blog.  I often speak in terms of acceptance and HAES to my non-fatosphere friends.  It is a point of pride for me that I no longer lose all my words just because someone doesn’t agree, disagrees or challenges me. 

I wonder if anyone else has felt like this?  Have you ever felt like your words were stolen away?  Have you ever lost practice in speaking about certain ideas that are important to you, such that you could hardly define your ideas anymore? 

I think it is very important to SPEAK-UP.  Of course, we all choose our battles.  It is in the interest of no one for us FA/HAES/etc folks to nitpick our friends to death any time they say something non-accepting.  If I know that I’m dealing with someone who simply doesn’t get it and doesn’t want to, I don’t even bother.  There are lots of ways to relate to people other than the things I blog about here.  However, I’ve found that some people are willing to at least consider the ideas and have a conversation about them… and those are the best times.  Being heard, if not necessarily agreed with… it’s just a beautiful thing.

In my experience, if I don’t speak-up, eventually I forget what was the secret thing that was important to me in the first place.  Not speaking-up turns into not chewing on the ideas turns into forgetting what was important to you in the first place… at least this is how it has always happened to me.  Anyone else relate?

In this world that is so in your face about “thin = health”/”fat = morally bad,” it is so important that we use our voices and not allow ourselves to be bulldozed and intimidated into going over the cliff with the poor lemmings who are diving over the cliff of eating and fat being moral issues. 

Have you ever lost your voice?  How did you get it back?  Why did you lose it?  Have you ever felt like the cat had your tongue when you were challenged on HAES-like issues? 

–AngryGrayRainbows