Silence is a Lie

I'm reading a new book this week. Though I read a lot, it is this book in particular that inspires me to write again.  The book itself is amazing, as unique and raw and honest as the man who wrote it.  "If You Feel Too Much" is written by Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of To Write Love On Her Arms, the nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting people to help and hope and doggedly standing by the idea that "Hope is real. Help is real. Your story is important."  Now, this blog isn't going to spiral into a book review, but I will say this: I hope I can do half the good with my life that Jamie has done with his.  It's a book everyone should read.  Read it!

I've often wondered who I am, when you boil it all down, when you remove all the things that just don't matter.  What's left?  For so long I thought I was a cutter, a sexual abuse victim, a freak, someone with PTSD, a burden.  But now I wonder what else I might be.   Is it possible to make a difference in this world?  I think that maybe it is, and that maybe that is what I am supposed to do.

I still wonder why I am this way. Why I feel things in a way that seems so much deeper than those around me.  I see too much, I feel too deeply, I empathize so much that it all but crushes me at times.  Why does a casino in Las Vegas feel so heavy, so laden with desperation?  Why does a story told of a horrible thing bring to me inescapable visions of the horrors that must have been felt and heard and seen?  Why must I hear the cries in my head and feel the pounding heart of terror when I read a news article about some crime and some victim? Why, why, why?

One of the best things about To Write Love On Her Arms is the t-shirt campaign and the conversations it sparks.  When you wear a shirt like the ones To Write Love creates, you don't do so without risk of conversation.  These are the conversations that we would never have otherwise, because no one talks about these things--the dark things, the uncomfortable things, the crazy things.

Depression.  Suicide.  Addiction.  Self-Harm.

I stood in an elevator inside a hospital and had one of these conversations.  Often, the conversations are brave, and they are honest, and they are beautiful.  Other times, though, they reinforce the stigma.  At these times it is we--the warriors of hope and of love-- that must be the brave ones, the honest ones.  I stood in the elevator and the woman peered at my shirt.  I watched her lips form the words as she read them there.  I took a deep breath and gathered my courage, because I could see the question forming there.  After a moment, she looked up and asked it.  THE question.  The reason we warriors of hope wear the shirt.  "What does your shirt mean?" she asked.  "It's a message of hope," I told her.  "To Write Love on Her Arms is an organization that exists to connect people to help for addiction, suicide, depression, and self-injury, and to say that they aren't in it alone, that there is hope."  I waited.  The woman cleared her throat uncomfortably and turned to stare back at the elevator doors.  After a moment, to her obvious relief, they opened and allowed escape.  Her message was clear.  "We don't talk about those things."  I'd let the stigma out of the bag and I was rude for doing it, for daring to wear a shirt that dared people to ask the question.

But I don't agree.  I lived by that deadliest of rules for so long and I never, ever, told anyone.  The silence rule kept me quiet through the abuse, and for years after.  The silence rule told me to seek help from no one, and to trust no one.  It whispered lies and demanded secrets.  And I obeyed.  I kept quiet, for so, so long.  I told no one when I couldn't stand how I felt in my own skin.  I told no one when I thought I would explode, or die, or when I felt out of control.  And when you cannot talk, you find no relief.  When silence is the rule, the secrets and the lies will devour your soul in the darkest of nights until finally, you find a different way.  For me, that way was pain.  Cutting to breathe, the drinking and weed to forget. And the silence rule is an island.  It cuts you off from anyone that might try to love you and everything that is good.  The secrets and lies taint everything and everyone around you until there is no safety, no home, no good thing left.  You are alone, and no one even knows you're not there anymore.

I have come far since then, and though I'm far from healthy, I know now that the silence rule is a lie.  We should not keep quiet, we should not avoid the hard and honest words.  We should say the brave thing, speak the true things, and change the world for someone else who maybe isn't brave enough to say it yet.  Maybe that's the part that we can get right finally.  I have to believe I'm wired like this for a reason, and that there is a purpose in all of this.  I think that maybe I'm here to tell people these things--that silence is a lie and that we were never meant to do this alone.  We were meant to love deeply and to be loved.  We were meant to help each other and to feel deeply and to hope and dream and scream and sing.  We were meant to see the beauty and contribute to it, to rescue and live honestly and with bravery and courage.  

So I'll start by saying it here, on my smallest of stages but with all that I am poured into these words:

The silence rule is wrong.  Speak up for yourself and for others.  You were never meant to do this alone or without help.  Hope is real, help is real, and your story is so very important.  Always keep fighting.  It's worth it.

You don't have to go it alone. Visit http://twloha.com/find-help for local and national resources for help.