The silence that drives love apart

[serai]

.
I've been having some trouble reconciling my story lately, and the trouble almost all has to do with silence. As it's gone on, I've been more and more unsure about the silence between them. How can people feel so fucking much and never say anything? Anything about what they're feeling, I mean. I was starting to get really kinda nervous and unsure about this aspect of High Contrast, when I read this:


There are layers of pain and mistrust and betrayal that keep all of us so far away from saying simple things of love and belonging.

-- Richard Gere


That's Gere talking about his latest film, in which he plays a homeless man. In the quote, he's talking about a scene where his character visits the estranged daughter he never sees much, and how they just sit around and don't say all the things they must and want to say.

And that kinda did it for me. When I read that, I became re-connected to all the times in my life when I've wanted, needed, absolutely had to say the thing that was hurting and tearing me apart, and couldn't do it. I remembered a day when a friend of mine said something that hurt my feelings, and I couldn't say anything to her for maybe an hour, because my mother taught me by example the virtues of the Nasty Silent Treatment, and I ended up being UNABLE to speak in situations like that, even though I was thinking right then and there that I really, really wanted to say something. BUT I COULDN'T. Really. It was like tape was over my mouth - I was physically unable to speak.

The things that happen in childhood, in adolescence, shape us far, far more than we are ever aware. Sembene was right - the past is not past. It's who we are. Eugene Hutz said it perfectly, "The past is always living right on the side of us."

These boys are struggling with their pasts, which have scarred them so much they can't say the things they need to say. They quite literally can't, and up til now I'd forgotten why or how that could be true.

Fear and mistrust and betrayal, all things they've both had intimate knowledge of. No wonder they can't be happy, either together or apart. *hugging my boys*

Comments

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

ended up being UNABLE to speak in situations like that, even though I was thinking right then and there that I really, really wanted to say something. BUT I COULDN'T. Really. It was like tape was over my mouth - I was physically unable to speak.

This is me. I don't know where it came from for me, but I completely shut down when someone hurts me or angers me. It's always been a self-protection to look like nothing affects me.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Horrible, isn't it? It's like I can't control my mouth when that happens - it slams shut and nothing I can do will open it.

[danae_b]

*joins you in hugging the boys*

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Poor sweet boys. I love them so.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean. It took my husband getting a terminal illness for me to open up to him. I was taught that nice girls don't fight or say what's on their mind because it might make others uncomfortable, and that was why I had trouble expressing myself. I still do. Poor boys. They're in a painful situation.

[aliensouldream.livejournal.com]

It fascinates me how human beings manage to communicate at all in an intimate way, we're all so knotted up and language is imperfect so there's always doubt and misinterpretation. It's like the little bits of grit that can fly up and shatter your windshield when a moment before you were cruising safely.