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Interlude 5 - My Voice Has Been Stolen


Why can’t I say what I mean to say when I speak?  I try to convey my thoughts and feelings in an effort to express myself through speech yet only incoherent noise escapes my lips.  No matter how hard I try, how hard I struggle; the words just don’t come out right.  All I want to do is speak my mind, to let people know who I am and what I think, yet as always it comes back to the fact that I cannot speak. 
I think it comes from the need to hide who I am from the world.  All my life I have been told that I had to conform to the role that society has set for me.  When I was growing up, every time I did something that did not fit into the role that someone thought I should fit into, I was mocked and ridiculed, told I was a freak.  Overtime I learned to fit into the role that had been defined for me, conform lest I be destroyed.  Because of this I am an actor, an actor on the stage of life, one of the best actors that have ever lived.  I have the whole world fooled.  They look at me and they see exactly what they expect to see, the person that they think I should be and it only cost me my voice. 
The world sees the shell, not the person inside.  If they could see to my core they would see that she is screaming in frustration, desperately wanting to be heard, yet I keep her locked away as the thirty-two years of my life have told me I should.  Her eyes are filled with tears of frustration at not having a voice, being able to watch life go by but not able to do anything to affect it.  If she were to show herself, and the world was to see her, then all the hate, all the pain that led to where she is now would be heaped once again upon her shoulders and it would break her. 
She wants to be free… I want to be free.  This life of hiding is slowly killing me.  I am tired of hiding behind this façade I put up.  I am tired of having to fit the role that people have thrust upon me.  I am tired and I just want it all to end.  It’s not fair that I was forced to live this life.  I didn’t want it.  If it wasn’t for the one that I love above all others I believe I would have chosen to end this long ago.  She is the only one who has ever listened to me and accepts me for who I am.  She doesn’t judge me.  She makes life bearable when I think it is getting to be too much.  Yet, despite the fact that I can be myself around her, even in her presence I cannot speak.  The struggle is still there no matter what. 
I try as hard as I can, yet I struggle still.  It makes me want to scream, to shout, to cry, to lash out, to try to force it due to the frustration that I am filled with due to my inability to express myself.  Sometimes I just don’t know what to do.  I just want to be able to be myself without fear of the world and the people in it.  It is enough to make me wish that magic were real so I could just magically correct the issue that has led me to hide myself.  Unfortunately, that is not the way reality works though. 
Perhaps if I were braver then maybe I could present my face to the world for all to see, yet I am a coward and I know it.  I see other people that are just like me that are willing to do what they feel that they must, opening themselves to attack, and I am jealous of them and the spine that they have.  I want to be them so bad.  If I was them then I wouldn’t have to be me, I would be braver and not have to live in fear… at least that is what I think.  Sometimes I wonder if they had to deal with the same kind of thoughts that I deal with in this regard. 
But, as much as I sometimes wish I could be them, that doesn’t change the fact that I am me.  So I hide, I cry, I hurt and ache.  I struggle daily with these thoughts, knowing that nothing will ever change because of my fear and cowardice.  I know that with what little I have said here I still have barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to say but, as I have mentioned before, I cannot speak.  I have tried to speak my mind and use my voice but I know that I have not articulated even a tenth of what I feel.  Oh well, life goes on.  Maybe one day I will find my voice once more, but till then I hide, I cry, I hurt and I ache. 

- Arylin Michelle (4/7/2012)
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