I’ve Lost My Voice But I’m Trying To Find It

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I’ve lost my voice.

Over the last year, I feel that I have lost my voice. It has been slowly silenced as time progresses and I’ve let it dwindle and damn near die. I am in a relationship that makes me feel more like a burden than a gift. I feel as if being this emotional human is just too damn difficult and as the months passed, what used to be words grew into this damning indifference. Like being me is some sort of thing to hide, to be ashamed of. Because I am different. I feel a lot, all the time, and I’m emotional. I’m not some rational robot that computes everything into a simple “it’s fine” or “no biggies.” I’ve never known how to just feel a little bit. Its either all at once or none at all. And the latter is definitely far worse than the former.

Over the past year, I have lost my voice. I stopped writing, stopped creating, and started sleeping a lot. This is the year my grandpa died. The year the earth shattered and I still don’t know how to climb out of the rubble around me. It seems pretty strange to me, that I have all these things to write about, but when pen comes to page its left blank. Am I scared? Am I blocked? Am I just emotionally spent and unable to determine my next step? I spent a lot of time mad at myself for not being myself. But what can I do to change that at this point? How can I change that from where I stand now?

Over the past year, I’ve lost my voice. I shared a piece with my significant other not too long ago, it was an unfinished thought holding on by a small thread of hope. He cut the string. Criticized a piece before I even had the chance to make it into something. I was just excited to write, but the fire that grew hot in-between the words of that piece were extinguished faster than they were created. I haven’t touched it since. It’s weird being where I am sometimes. Wandering through life as a creative not creating. Living with a noncreative who spends more time hypercritical than trying helping me build my pieces up. I stopped speaking, and I thought it was because I had nothing more to say. I’m coming to realize it may be in part because the one person I want to share it all with, doesn’t understand the creative process that makes me, me.

I’ve lost my voice. Beautiful heartfelt strings of sentences swiftly no more. When I open my mouth to speak no words come out. That part of me, so tied up, the rope burns turn to scars constantly reminding me of the times I’ve failed myself.

I’ve lost my voice, but today I’m trying to find it.