To speak...

  Speaking.  For most people in the world the ability to express themselves verbally is taken for granted.  They don’t realize that just because you can talk doesn’t mean you can.  Sorry if that’s confusing…but I mean it like this.  I am verbal.  I can speak.  I even enjoy it sometimes.  But sometimes….I cant.  Sometimes there is a barrier between my brain and my mouth and it just won’t let me speak.  If um…if I try and talk about emotions it…my brain goes into panic mode and just sort of shuts down, traps me inside my own panic.  It’s like a massive wave washing over me it just…it brings that pain back.  All of the pain I’ve felt recently just hits me over and over again.  So I…I stopped trying to talk about my emotions.  But that…That doesn’t work.  When I hold this weight to me, when I don’t talk at all about it, it crushes me in those tidal waves.  So I….I don’t speak it.  But I also don’t hold it and not talk to anyone.  I give it here.  I put every ounce of emotion, all of my pain and all of my hope; I put it here to get it away from me.

  I guess I am hoping that…if I can help even one person who reads this know they aren’t alone, if I can help even one person have hope, I am doing something right.  If I can help someone, If I can offer someone a hand and say” hey, yeah the universe sucks right now, but that’s not your fault.  Whatever is wrong, whatever happened, do not blame yourself.  Do not punish yourself,” I can do more for that person than anyone has done for me.  At my school, they have decided I’m doing something “wrong” by responding.  They have decided I am just as at fault as the people who start it because I snap at them, because I yell at them, because I tell them to shut up.  I don’t deny that I do that I know I do.  Btu that doesn’t mean I want to.  That doesn’t mean I have control and it doesn’t mean that I am as bad as them. My teachers have decided I should be able to control my emotions and therefor they think I want to yell.  They think I want to respond they think I want that pain they think I want this anger and this and they…they think that just because I yell I am angry.  I am not angry at those kids.  I yell or snap or…whatever because I am in pain.  I…when people are tapping their hands on a table or whatever it is like drums being banged behind me.  It is as hard for me to think as something like bombs going off, or drums being banged, or whatever.  It pounds at my brain and I can’t even think. 

  Anyways, the worst part is i…I started believing them about….about it being my fault.  I started….started thinking that I deserve this, that I should feel this pain that I am doing something wrong that…that makes what they do to me ok.  I guess I’m…lucky.  I have a couple of close friends who showed me that this isn’t my fault, who showed me that I’m not…not less than them that i….I deserve just as much as them or anyone else.  It has been a very long time since I could really really mean this, but I…I don’t blame myself for this.  I…I don’t blame myself for my pain I don’t blame myself for what they do to me.  And I’m….I’m not going to let them keep doing this to me.  I am not going to let me, or anyone else, think that when we react to people who are cruel….that we deserve to be punished that we deserve that pain.  

   So next time they tell me that this is my fault, that I’m just as bad as them, that I’m just as at fault, I’m going to say no.  I’m going to say that they do NOT get to punish me for what others drive me to, they do NOT get to punish me for the pain I’m in.  That isn’t fair to me, or to anyone else who schools say that to.  If they haven’t lived through what we do they don’t have the right to make assumptions. They don’t have to right to cause us more pain.  And I’m going to tell them that. I am going to tell them that I am not letting them punish me for what others are doing.  Maybe then they will listen.