back to writing

As I stand at the edge of the cliff, I remember everything that brought me here.

I’ve never really talked to people. It’s like you have to complete a whole secret quest and find the magic keys that open my mouth and draw out a few words if you want me to say anything. I’ll listen to everything you say, nod and laugh as appropriate, but nothing of any substance will come out unless the stars have aligned just right. I tell myself I’m not empty, there is so much bubbling inside of me waiting to get out, but sometimes I’m not even sure that’s true. It becomes hard to remember who you are if you never are around other people. Who are we if not what we are to others?

All this to say, I didn’t tell most people I was going to jump off a cliff. I was going to tell you, but the words got stuck in my throat. As I wove my way through rush hour crowds after work, as I sat, mute, in the centre of a party, all I could think of was all the things I wasn’t saying.

“Have you seen that article ranking political candidates based on their looks?” said someone whose name I can’t remember.

The person sitting to my right groaned. “Yeah, how sexist can our media be? Where were the men in that list?” Everyone else in the circle agrees. I nod, too. I think about how many times I’ve already heard this conversation. Sexism, misogyny, objectification, it never ends. Maybe everyone else is wrong for talking so much, if it doesn’t seem to change things anyway.

I catch your eye across the room and my mind drifts from the conversation around me. I think of the things I would be telling you if I knew how. You’re chatting animatedly to the person next to you about music. Everytime I try to talk to you about music I never get any further than a first-grade-level analysis. “Yeah, I really loved their latest album, it was really good.” End of conversation. How do you put the feeling you get from hearing someone translate their life into melodies and rhythms that feel like they might as well be your own into words? I watch to see how you do it.

When I snap out of it, the group I was sitting with have drifted. Time to drift, too. Like a tangle of seaweed, floating on top of the waves, until it gets tossed in with another clump of seaweed or eaten by a swooping bird.

It wasn’t always like this. People were easier to please when I was a child. I lost the talent of knowing what people wanted to hear from me at around the same time I gained a talent for writing things nobody cared to read. I spent years of my youth writing for no one in particular and came out of it to find I had no voice anymore. Conversations can’t be held by witty remarks of up to 280 characters.