Speaking

This is the only notebook I have never lost, I can confide a series of journal-like thoughts and they stick like fluorescent stars on a ceiling, floating up above for me to look at. To the world, there are so many things I'd like to say, and I never know if I am really the right person to say them.

Life is fleeting, they say, life is long. We spend too much time not fighting for what we believe in. I want to fight-- let me start at my pace, and do what I can. I will do what I can, to protest, to speak up.

But in order to speak we need to believe in the goodness of people. That they are not deaf, but malleable. That they would pay attention.

We spend so much time in war and fear, in hesitation and insecurity.

I have started swimming again and it helps me to remember. The feeling of my arms scrambling in the water, pushing like I too, could cross the sea if I needed to. My lungs emptying out, the knots come up through my chest. I can feel them, at last, the threads grow so moist they break and I can breathe again.

On Sunday I was a couple of steps behind my friends and when my thoughts started buzzing I said sharply 'okay,' to make them go away. They turned and I laughed it off. Off they went, these thoughts. And I breathed in.

One day I will write about sunshine. About the daisies we caught. I will write about love, all its forms, I will write about hope. More than anything else, I believe in hope. I see every day the goodness of people, not just through children waddling down corridors, mothers, brothers, friends, but those who have weathered through everything and still choose to be kind. Through the way my dad will let me finish my sentence, even if it means he has to stand in a parking lot before telling me everyone else has gone inside, so he has to say goodbye. People are so kind, and day by day I find kindness is no longer so much of a surprise.

A few months ago, I was at a table and some friends of friends said that I never got to finish a sentence, that I was always being interrupted. I don't mean this to sound self-pitying, I just hadn't noticed. It doesn't bother me. But I was touched and surprised by their goodness, that they would look, that they would listen. I think they told me they had counted, and the number of interruptions was eight. Why would anyone count someone else's unfinished sentences, except than because they are themselves nothing but good? So it struck me, when I found some old notes-- went looking for them, from April 2016:

'I had resigned myself to repeated interruptions, so sometimes when I was asked a question I didn’t bother answering. He paused, and let the more confident speaker finish, before asking me the question I had never got to answer. His eyes were clear and green and sincere. I caught him leaning back, his mouth closed and his gaze resting on me thoughtfully. He asked another question, which the overconfident jumped in to respond to, and he asked it again so I would answer.'

So how can I not believe in the right to speak, when some listeners are so endlessly good? And perhaps that is all the reason there needs to be.