Unaltered Voices

  Like me, you have had to figure out a lot alone. I can not say when this started, but I have held my feelings in my hands for most of my life as if I were holding a baby, trying to figure out if I feed or change them. It has been nothing I wanted to do, but I had no choice. The way I felt about things did not matter. Having my feelings dismissed when I was feeling down was suffocating. Sadly, I normalized it and accepted it in relationships. It was a cycle that was hard to break. It did not help that I lost my voice, so I sank into a shell even when I wanted to respond or question things. My emotional state was all out of sorts. I gave up repeatedly because of the clutter that I did not know was clutter until much later. The sting of the disappointment faded. I assumed I was okay. I went on with life, did not talk about it anymore, and that was that. Journaling has been my thing since I was a girl, so I released some of how I felt, but not enough to keep it from erecting and sending