April 9, 2017 - 18:42
Lately it’s felt like my voice is missing. It must be something like how Ariel felt, having her voice snatched away and held somewhere close by but also far away. I’ve felt lost. Demotivated. Like I don’t have anything to share in class and like the words I write on these pages are empty and void of feeling. Most weeks, I feel like I’d be better off not saying anything at all, and I don’t. But then I spend the rest of the week feeling like I’ve wasted something, like my words are blaming me for leaving them out, like my brain is in conflict with my mouth which doesn’t want to speak with my fingers, so instead they sit there idle at the keyboard for hours.
I don’t want to be stuck. In a class about literacy, about those who can’t speak for themselves, it feels selfish that I can’t even write a short post. It feels like i’m being ungrateful for the class I get to take, for the words I get to say, and for the friends who sit around me and tell me they understand. I feel like I don’t deserve that community, my class community. Often times I feel like I’m just tolerated, like the things I say don’t matter, and that no one agrees. I fold into myself like origami, mountain folds and valley folds creating something smaller. I wish that this folding was intricate like a paper swan but instead it feels flat and ugly, like the paper balloons I made as a child that never wanted to inflate all the way.
The less I say the worse I feel but the more I say the faker I feel. I’m caught between a need to share and a need to hide. Between a want to change and a feeling that I’m irrelevant. Between those who seek out their voices and do something about it and myself, stuck in my own head where everything I say is made of promises and wishes and crumpled up balls of paper.