finding my voice

 I haven't really been able to write since year 2 of university. That year, I put my voice out to people, and it felt like they betrayed it. Other people gave me their voice, and they felt like I betrayed them. I grew scared of my voice - and scared of giving of myself to others. I learnt to burrow. I wanted to appear cool, calm and indifferent, and so I was, for a while.

A few years ago, I had to learn how to use my voice again. A friend taught me that it was okay to say no. To me she seemed rude - overtly aggressive. I had been too used to saying yes all the time for fear of disappointing people, and the fact that she could express herself so candidly and unapologetically grated at me. She simply was comfortable with her wants and not-wants, and wasn't afraid to express it, in a manner that could be rude or tactful, perhaps depending on what she felt like doing, or how the recipient took it. Those years, it seems I had to learn to talk again, clumsily, like a toddling child, breaking things and bruising knees along the way. I was jarring and rude because I didn't know how to use my voice so freely - to me, passive-aggressiveness always meant aggressiveness, and to be overt was to be unkind - and in the process of learning how to speak again, I hurt that one friend. She was my guinea pig, my experimental space, because I never dared to speak that way to anyone else, ever. But she made it look so easy, like a teenager drinking beer by the roadside. Just do it. It isn't that hard. 

I stumbled and fumbled and I guess I've made a tiny bit of headway, but not much. I only use my voice when I'm given the space to - you can say no if you want to / ah in that case, maybe I'll decline for now, thanks. But I've also come to realise in recent times that I am not always sure what my voice is, either. It seems it's been buried so far deep I don't know where it is, or what it is, or what it wants. I'm afraid to use it - I'm afraid it'll set off an avalanche. And so I don't see it. But the more I don't see it, the more I feel like a vestige, a shadow, a mist. I need to be real again. Solid, opaque, substance flowing through my veins. I need to know me to be me. And so I must try to dig inside, find the little ball of a voice inside my depths, and ask: what are you, really? What am I?

I've been asked why I want to go to therapy. It's not that I'm suffering from mental issues or that I think there's something gravely wrong. I've just... lost my voice. I want to find it. It's easy to go through the motions of the day, but hard to interrogate, and I barely know who I am or what I want anymore. I want to be me, freely, fully, confidently. I trust that what I uncover will be precious, and liberate me to be the person I was meant to be - one who loves truly with the heart and partnership of God, who trusts enough to open my heart, to be unashamed, to inspire others to do the same.