A Quieter Voice

I didn’t speak if I thought my voice would be unwanted.

I surrounded myself with those who seemed to like it.

Those are the people I called my friends. The ones who could see me more clearly.

The ones who could understand.

Then I learned to respect my voice in a different way.

I learned to speak despite the audience.

A thin line before speaking to spite the audience.

In no time I was able to learn to speak under any circumstance.

Through chaos, through anxiety, through tears, through anger, through fear.

Completely uninhibited expression of speech.

I toggled the line between humility and pride. Between responsibility and recklessness.

I aimed to acclimate myself in a good space. One where I’d be able to speak, but not so as to forget to listen.

I reprimanded myself when I felt I came off too arrogant.

I studied the ways in which my styles of speech might be understood by strangers.

I listened.

I tried to understand.

I opened my mind to a world of minds and found massive and intricate dimensions of both beauty and horror.

I listened and I learned. And I spoke and I taught.

They say “find your voice”. But my experience was more… training ny voice than finding it.

And funnily enough it seems to have come full circle.

I find myself questioning, “why would someone who doesn’t like my thoughts and thinks I talk too much, and disregards everything I say always want me to talk to them?”

I don’t know. But I did. And for a long time only to them.

So much so that speaking to others began to feel like a vacation.

I would begin… expecting my “ramblings” to be tossed aside, critiqued, or taken offensively… but something miraculous would happen and they would engage.

People were happy to talk to me. I’d forgotten the feeling.

When I was young I didn’t speak much if I thought my voice would be unwanted.

I saved it for those who I knew might appreciate it.

And though the practice meant I struggled… trying to guess what others might think of my voice… it rarely ever felt wasted.

It’s profound really. The times in my life where I spoke the least were never times where I felt unheard.

Now.. I get exhausted with talking.

The idle chatter has given birth to a new little voice. One that feels excluded.

I thought maybe I was okay now. When I stopped being afraid a stranger might judge my accent, volume, or choice of words.

But now I see that the learning… the training isn’t over.

I have a new voice. It seems much more confident and self-assured than any before but sometime I wonder if the truth is that it isn’t really.

Sometimes I think it’s a quieter voice.

Dolled up, dressed up. Palatable, convenient, and appropriate.

But a quieter voice nonetheless.

Quieter begets the stage. Lights on cue. Band ready. Stage-directed crowd. Hypeman. Camera angles. Choreography.

Glitz and Glam and everything one might need to create an amazing show.

And yet you still end up craving the authenticity of a woman belting her life away accompanied by not much more than a a single instrument to keep beat.

Because when you grow up admiring the boisterousness of blues, gospel, and r&b singers; quieter is not better.

Dolled up, dressed up. Palatable, convenient, and appropriate.

Quieter is not better.