Not running away to nowhere

Something crazy happened to me last night. I listened to myself yell at my husband, and it scared me. It was terrifying, because I don't know where the voice came from. I mean, I couldn't hear my voice inside my head and it didn't sound like my usual voice. I know that I was crying, but that was not enough to distort my voice into this screeching, screaming, blood curdling, wounded animal kind of primordial shriek that rushed to the surface from some hidden depth and defended me. I know that this stream of sound, that these words were coming from inside of my body but I heard them as though I was not the one uttering them.

And I say that they defended me, because my I saw my husband recoil from them in a way that he had never recoiled from me. I might have been pathetic and unattractive when I have fallen into a real slobbering, catching my breath, please hear me, because you don't really seem to hear me when I speak to you in a regular way kind of cry, but I never saw him recoil, as though rather than annoyed or angry that he had to deal with me and I couldn't just be agreeable and make his life easy all the time and oh shit, there she goes again--no he looked horrified. He looked like he was looking at something or maybe hearing something, like I was, that meant more business than I had ever meant in my life.

This voice was not sad. It was not hurt. It was not frustrated and tired, though it left me and my body exhausted. This voice was angry. It didn't want understanding or support or love or affection or someone to believe in it and to share its life like what I always seem to end up crying about. The voice that answered my husband's angry "get up" as I sobbed on the floor because my actions, sacrifices, words, love or whatever had not been enough again, told him to, I believe it was something to the effect of "Shut the fuck up." and "Don't ever talk to me like that again when I am upset". But it wasn't hurt and desperate. The voice had authority to it. The voice wasn't going to take it anymore. The voice said "me", but it wasn't a "me" that I recognized.

This "me", this voice, was desperate, but not in a way that I had ever been. This me was not running away to nowhere and finding a way to cope and make due. This me was not running in circles trying to be okay and carry on. This me was a wild animal that had been suddenly wounded, caught off guard, and it was cornered, but it would not lie down and be eaten. It could not crawl off and lick its wounds again. This me lept out of that corner with its claws primed and screamed out a warning so desperately strong that the hunter and the prey switched places. This voice,that came from inside of me, was not someone to be underestimated, pushed around, kept waiting or placated. It was a voice to be feared.

God knows I feared it. And from the look on my husband's face, he feared it. I certainly don't want to become whatever it was. But I would like to harness it, if wild animals can ever be harnessed, and learn its energy and its fight and determination.

I want to write. I want to start my own business. I want to have people read my words and I want them to change and to make the world better. I don't want to terrify anyone, but I want them to know that I have a voice to be heard and to be paid attention to--not because they feel sorry for me, but because I have something valuable to say. And I want to say what I think needs to be said, not what someone thinks is okay for me to say or what is next in the Spanish curriculum for my classroom or what nice girls say. I want to say what I think needs to be said.

That is what this "me" said last night. It said I was hurting, that I didn't want to hurt and that addressing a person in pain with anger was wrong. And it is wrong. But I think now that I don't have to be that person in pain. Now I have that voice that defended me. I have that that voice that sprung into action and protected me.

At that moment I think I split in two. The exhaustion I felt must have come from giving birth to that voice. From deep inside me it burst out and its first birth cries saved me. With God beside me, I won't have to run away to nowhere ever again. I will speak.