I find it a little ironic, almost humorous, that on the day I told myself that I was going to work on making entries to my blog, I lose my audible voice. I’m talking about, my voice is so GONE that even my best attempt at a whisper cannot be heard. So here I am, forced to communicate only through written words since my voice box is currently out-of-order.
The inability to speak has made it a very quiet day for me. No one is talking to or calling me because I cannot be understood. It puts me in a position to where I can only really listen to everyone else…and it’s not so bad. I realize that I actually hear a lot more and am able to truly listen to what is being said to and around me because the voice in my head is not already at work formulating my next response. Not only that, I certainly can’t argue against or refute anything that anyone says to me.
You see, one of my biggest insecurities is that I feel that I do not effectively express myself. Most of the time I feel like my mind is going a 1,000,000 miles/minute, thinking about 100 different things and I feel like often times, my words do not come out as well-organized thoughts. I feel as though I say too much, or I jump around without any flow; sometimes I will be talking about something and completely lose my train of thought and forget not only what I was about to say, but what I already had said. I feel like I repeat myself by saying the same thing 20 different ways because I want to make sure that the person listening to me is understanding exactly what I’m trying to say; I stutter, I stumbled, I lose focus, and I get frustrated. This often results in a mental shut down where I no longer want to say anything at all.
I remember, some one that I used to be involved with would get so frustrated with me because when he asked me, “What are you thinking?” or “What’s wrong?” my most common response was, “Nothing.” Not because there was nothing on my mind, but because I didn’t know how to say it. Then I would come back hours or days later and bring back “old stuff” because I finally felt like I had formulated and organized my thoughts well enough to effectively communicate with him and have a real discussion. He took it as a way that I was trying to manipulate him with my words when I sincerely was just trying to say what I really wanted to say without it being loaded with emotion and a bunch of “extraness”.
Sometimes when I have something really important to say, or I’m planning a conversation with someone about something that has heavily been on my mind, I write it out in letter format first. That way I can read and reread it to myself, recognizing key points and eliminating any unproductive comments. Yes. My mind really is so scrambled that I have to do this. Writing “letters” also keeps me from allowing my emotions to send text message or e-mails that the “old Catharine” has been known to do and usually regretted. SMH…
Although I turn to writing when I don’t really know what to say with my words, I have my own insecurities there too. I am a product of the text messaging and instant messenger generation. When I write, instinct tells me that “going to” is “gonna”, “What are you” is “whatchu”, “sort of” is “sorta” and that all proper forms of punctuation are unnecessary. This causes quite the problem when I am attempting to write something to be published or read in a professional field. It’s as if all 15 years of educational training has slipped my mind. I write run-on sentences, I overuse commas, I’m unsure when to use a comma and a semi-colon, I know you’re not suppose to start a sentence with “and” or “but” – but I do it all the time, I use hyphens when I think I’ve already used too many commas and I’m quite certain that I make up words on a regular basis.
Yet here I am, writing a blog.
So, with all that being said, today is not only a day that I attempt to conquer my fear of writing, it is also a day of absorption. I’m taking in everything around me, using this time to read, listen, watch, and observe without contributing my own two cents since no one can hear me anyway. It’s actually a bit of a relief, almost relaxing, to just sit back and hush up for a little bit…but just a little bit.