Finding my voice

I wonder how often in my life I've truly "found my voice".

I know the moments when I have, just as I know the moments when I've actually lost the ability completely. I've suffered from aphasia a couple of times. For a long time I looked for a word in the dictionary to describe what I felt, then I discovered the word apoplexy. I've been apoplectic a few times in my life. Oddly, the times when one becomes speechless with rage and hurt and pain are the times when one's soul, I think, expands a little more.

But generally speaking, I don't think I truly have my voice. I wonder if many people do. We can speak, sure. But some deeper part of us can so often feel completely unable to speak. I still feel that way now, even after years of therapy, attempts to express myself through all kinds of media, and writng so, so much. This blog only touches on what I've written. I have diaries and dream diaries and journals and video diaries up the wazoo.

So what is it that I want to say, or feel able to say? It feels to me that I'm not connected to some emotional place that's something to do with others. This is where my words become vague. The thoughts are tangled here. So the words on the page become tangled.

But why do my words have to be anything less than tangled? How much is communicated, after all, in tangled words as in untangled words? There's as much value in tangled words as art just as there's value in abstract painted art. So maybe I just need to let whatever words come out onto the page, rather than be too careful about them.

Maybe I need to do the same with my words in general. I know that one of my things has been to try to make myself understood perfectly rather than adequately. Many people get by this way. I've always thought deeply and towards a well considered conclusion, rather than "on the fly". But perhaps that's not ideal.

What's made me raging and angry so often is that things have just built up and built up and I've not known of any way to deal with them.

It's nearly 20 years ago that one of the most profound events in my life happened - the rape of my then girlfriend. I was apoplectic at the time, and I've yet been fully able to understand why. It doesn't make sense to me why her rape affected me as much as it did and has, and still does today. She once said that I was more effected by it than her and there's some truth in that.

Maybe it's my overwhelming sense of duty and some kind of paternal instinct. I've always wanted to be a problem solver. I've wanted to work out all the world's problems ever since I was a child. Maybe it's because I felt vulnerable and scared for a lot of the time, and I just wanted to fix the world and all the people in it. I had a messiah complex that maybe I still have the remnants of. Being the hero has been an attractive role for me. After all, if you've come up with the perfect model for living life happily and without rage and pain and hurt, and you can take everyone's pain and fear away, you're going to be a huge hero, and big star. I guess I wanted that.

Question is, why did I want that? Probably because I've felt so small, and so ignored, for much of my life. I certainly felt I wasnted noticed as a kid. And whenever who I am has been diminished - especially by others - my ego has been bruised.

I dunno. I can go around in circles looking for the right words or answers or whatever it is. I guess I'll find my voice when I stop looking for it. Same with happiness. These kinds of things require some kind of surrtender. But the surrender can only happen when some fundamnental, unconscious part of The Self allows it to happen. Contacting that fundamental, unconscious part of The Self really is the trick. And that's what reconnecting is all about, isn't it?

I'll find my voice when I reconnect. And I'll reconnect when I listen to myself and love myself and be patient with myself.

Right?