If you asked my friends three years ago what I was like they would probably tell you that I was funny, always had a joke ready or that I knew how to fill the void with laughter. Without a doubt, I knew how to make other people laugh and smile. But there was one thing I couldn’t do, not because I didn’t know how but because something within my body just said, “no”. The truth is that I was a champion at putting on a fake smile and giving fake words to appease but I didn’t have a voice.
Years of abuse growing up taught me to smile and say what people wanted to hear. Speaking the truth wasn’t an option because I had to protect the only family system that I knew. I wish I could tell you that I grew up and found my voice but that’s not what happened. My relationship with one abuser grew closer and I kept quiet to keep his secret. At the same time, because all I had seen was dysfunction and harm within a family system, I walked into an emotionally abusive marriage and stayed.
Emotionally abusive people’s goal is to keep you from having a voice. All they want is for you to listen when they speak. Talking back to them in any way isn’t possible and anytime I did that within our marriage, he would scream and turn and twist words until I wasn’t sure what to do. The one thing I knew would keep me the safest and get it all to end faster was to stay quiet. Slowly over time, it went from bowing out of questions about major life decisions to no longer having a voice to speak about what I wanted for dinner or if I needed a tiny item from the store. I was quiet at the deepest level of my soul, all of my words had been muted to give people what they wanted or protect their secrets.
I’m a writer who didn’t have a voice but I didn’t realize how much my thoughts and words had been muffled by abusers. As I said, I knew how to make people laugh. I could tell a mean joke or throw a sarcastic jab in with perfect timing. But I couldn’t tell you what I wanted for dinner and I couldn’t stand up for myself and ask for what I’ve dreamed of for years, for a simple one or two-night vacation.
At the core level, I was mute. Not being able to ask to go on a simple overnight vacation doesn’t seem like the worst thing. There are greater struggles in this world that many experience that is way worse than not being able to tell your spouse that you disagree about the paint color in a room or what you wanted to do on Saturday morning. But when I sat down on the couch in a therapist’s office and had to open my life, the words wouldn’t come. When the words that I needed were more than a funny joke or casual greeting, my body could not produce sound.
Week after week I would sit on that couch and nothing would come out. Weeks were spent in silence with the answers to questions being played in my head but my tongue not being able to speak. We think abuse is harmful that leaves bruises and marks or that come from a child being touched, and that is incredibly harmful, but there’s a new level of abuse and harm when someone loses the ability to speak.
It took months for me to see my therapist as a safe person which enabled me to be able to mumble occasional answers or speak broken words. For every session with them in which I would use my voice, there was another one spent in silence or where I got up and left because I couldn’t do it anymore. Slowly I started being able to write out my thoughts and my therapist spent months reading mini novels that I would send at all hours of the day and night. As I wrote, I grew bolder and step-by-step I found my true written voice.
Then the day came when I screamed at my husband. I couldn’t take it any longer. He had followed me around the house taunting me, “you always do this, you clam up and won’t speak. You’re going back to your old habits and not confronting the issue because you are afraid of conflict”. He didn’t really want my truth, he wanted the words that I had learned long ago to make him happy, the ones that made him feel better and gave him what he wanted. Room-to-room he followed me with these taunts until we reached the kitchen where I was washing dishes and turning from the sink to stare him down, I let loose all the words that I had been holding for so long. I didn’t just say the words, I screamed them as loud as I could as my voice grew hoarse and raspy.
I had found my voice. And for the first time in 17 years, I told him what I wanted to say.
If this was a fairytale and my voice remained faithful and strong day after day, that would be wonderful. But fairytales don’t exist, I’ve learned that the hard way. Every day is still a battle to use my voice. Every single day I struggle to say what I really want to say. Occasionally I still sit on that couch in the therapist’s office and say nothing out loud. I still struggle to ask for help on the bad days because I would have to voice that I’m weak and vulnerable. My childhood abusers are still hidden, their secret is still safe with me. And no one outside of a select few in my world knows the torment that I’m going through day after day because my words to tell the truth about my life are still frozen.
But I have a voice. And that voice will be used to say that abuse destroys. Unseen abuse, the private abuse, is a powerful tool of destruction and pain. I have a voice. I have a voice that matters.