1. What are the words you do not have yet?
In my first biology class, the teacher passed out these little wafers. They were supertaster strips- a light paper material soaked in phenylthiocarbamide. The vast majority of my class set it on their tongue and tasted nothing. When I did it, the bitterness made me choke. I felt as if a pen had exploded in my mouth and soaked its ink into my tongue. That was almost 20 years ago and I still remember how it felt to flood my mouth with a feeling.
I feel the same when I hear the word "widow". I can see that most people do not read into it, do not taste it at all. To them, it is a simple one word accounting of something that happened in my life.
Of someone that happened in my life.
For me, the bitterness makes me choke. I don't have a better solution though. I don't have better word, at least, not one that doesn't require a long, winding explanation.
My husband was my best friend, and I lost him, and I still don't have a word for that. I still say widow. It floods my own mouth with invisible ink.
I don't know how to say he died. (Depression that led to drinking that led to a diabetic organ failure? Is that slow suicide? Did he chose to leave? Did my leaving to go to prison trigger his depression to that extreme point? Did I murder him?)
I don't have the words for who I am anymore. I don't know the word for my new sense of freedom. (Born again?) I can't describe what type of writer I am. (Blogger? Barely. Poet? Rarely.) I don't know what to call the dream I have about my best possible future. (It is something to do with love.)
I don't know how to say I need honesty more than I need uninjured feelings.
2. What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]
I have things about me that exist even if I do not wear them well, or on my sleeves, or write them into books. Sometimes I am angry, sexual, panicked, gross, flippant, careless, thoughtful, kind, smart, sassy, snappy, grumpy, belligerent. Sometimes, all of those things in a matter of moments. Parts of my heart are still very much broken and betrayed. Part of my heart is so healed that it is filling up with new smiles and places and stories. I do not deserve the good life anymore, but the good life is a real thing and I still believe in it.
3. What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after. ]
- "You talk about prison a lot." (You were part of the culture that sewed it into my bones, how could you support the government in their endeavor to do so, and then deny it is part of my identity now?)
- "You're a do gooder." (Then how is it that I've done so little good?)
- "It makes sense that he's awful. He's a felon, you know what I mean." (I do know what you mean. In fact, I'm afraid I know more about you, and what you think of me, than you realize.)
- "You talk about your husband a lot. I mean, it's okay that you're not over it yet." (And I won't stop, and I won't be.)
- "I hope he gets raped in prison." (I am glad I was not raped in prison. I am sorry if that disappoints you.)
- "But she doesn't speak proper English, though." (English is constantly transforming. Also, you are probably not qualified to grade the quality of someone else's speech.)
- "Nobody reads poetry." (I do. It has saved me more than once.)
- "Blogging is dead." (It's not, nor was it ever living. Blogging is simply the ship that lets us sail, and every one of us here is a shipwright.)
- "The internet is causing massive disassociation, and breaking up communities." (The Internet has made connection possible in ways in never was before. That doesn't mean we can stop training the nuances and etiquettes of societal belonging. In fact, it means we need more education on these things.)
- "But don't you want kids?" (My womb is not a garden. Would you ask a cloud if it wished that trees bloomed from it? What would you gain from that information?)
- "You're not really ethnic, though. You're American." (I am both.)
- "That can't be your real name." (My heart says you're wrong.)
- "You look healthy!" (I am not.)
- "Your writing is important." (Important how? Did it change you? Or anything about this world? Can it? Could it? Would someone else do better with my story? Will it ever keep me from waking up for the prison count, blindly pushing to my feet at 6:15 in the morning? Will it bring my best friend back from the dead? Will it save yours?)
- "You're so exotic." (I know I am Other.)
Maybe that's enough for today.
4. If we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language, ask yourself: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" [So, answer this today. And everyday.]
Sometimes when you unpack things, it is very hard to fold them back into the places where you used to hide them. Sometimes when you punch down walls, you accidentally hit a human heart, and lose a friend. Sometimes when you say too much, the human ear is saturated with ideas and sounds and can't comprehend the message.
Sometimes talking out your thoughts makes you the person in the room who sounds like a parrot, just chirping on and on about the exact same thing. Eventually everyone stops listening. Sometimes expressing struggles build them into your identity, and then you can never shake them.
Sometimes you have to pick your battles, or you end up bleeding out on a hill over a question asked in good heart.
Sometimes, the people you love give you the wrong answer to the question that you struggled to verbalize, and then you have to decide what to do with that.
The fears at the heart of all of those sometimes:Telling this truth could hurt me, or worse, someone I love. Telling this truth could silence me. Telling this truth could slow down someone in the process of doing better.
Telling this truth could do something other than good.
Telling this truth could be something other than good.
Telling this truth could be something Other.
How exotic._____________________________________
This is THE AUDRE LORDE QUESTIONNAIRE TO ONESELF - Adapted from Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals by Divya Victor If you'd like to answer your own, I have included the questions for easy copy and paste. It was a very soothing writing prompt for me, strangely enough. I titled it this way in case I decide to do an update in a month or year.1. What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, "for what do you not have words, yet?"]
2. What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]
3. What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after. ]
4. If we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language, ask yourself: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" [So, answer this today. And everyday.]
