I Used to Have a Handle on Life when I Used to Have a Way With Words

Dear __________________

communityofreaders.org

I don't know how to say this. But I'll start by saying that I wasn't always like this. I used to have a way with words, but that was many years ago, long before you met me. I knew how to talk to the human race in a way that I though not many possessed. Often, as a child I would see my mother faced with an obstacle and in the evenings, I would have just the right words to sooth her pain, ease her fatigue and give her the strength she needed to carry on. Can you believe that at some point in my life I had the tenacity to believe that sometimes God used me to reach people and that sometimes He even spoke through me? But like I said, that was years ago, and now I have lost the most basic human function- that of comforting someone. Sure I can empathize with them- with someone who has lost a loved one for example- but even though I too have lost a loved one I do not know what to say to them or how to comfort them, because I feel that words are worthless and that we live in an era where words can no longer raise somebody from the dead. Nothing can.

What changed? Life, me - everything. I am usually at a loss for words, even when I know how I am feeling I usually do not know how to express myself. Most of the time though, I have found that if I sit down with myself and try to quiet the chaos, I do not even know how I am feeling. I find that most of the time I am living on the surface, not really allowing myself to feel much because my mortal defect is that I, unlike the rest of the world, do not have the ability to feel ‘normally’. Most of the time I can only experience extreme emotions and this is something that the world frowns upon. The world calls this 'melodrama' and 'attention-seeking' but I believe that long ago, this was called being human. Feeling neutral is a state that I have to work hard to feel by constantly counting my blessings, remembering that I am more fortunate than most of the world whilst at the same time shutting out the bad things in the world and in my life.

Imagine that life, which consists of feelings and emotions, was equitable to hearing. Dogs are said to hear four times better and than humans. I say ‘better,’ but as a little child I often used to worry that loud sounds would hurt their ears or that the world would be too noisy for them to ever get a good night’s rest. I have no doubt now that dogs have adapted to their hearing and know how to filter sound and drown out what they do not want to hear. I digress. If life is hearing, then I can say that the world’s hearing is that of a human and my hearing is that of a dog, or better yet, a human with hearing as acute as a dog’s hearing but without a dog’s ability to filter or escape from the noise. If this is all confusing at this point please forgive me and remember that I used to have a way with words, but not anymore.

Perhaps an easier way of saying this is that I feel in extremes that I cannot explain and instead of filtering or adapting to the ‘noise’ it builds up in me whilst I try time and time and again to drown out the noise of life- the pain, the nightmares, the depression, the joy of the simple things that others take for granted, the awkwardness, the Shona, the English, the swear words, curses and cries of a young woman who is just trying to be normal and speak ‘normally’. The solution for me is to numb myself and try and keep it in without imploding or worse still exploding- attempts I fail dismally at every so often and which result in everything spilling out of me, but not in words, in hot tears that turn cold from neglect, wails muffled by a pillow, violent thoughts, harm, hurt, sin and one-sided arguments with a God that I’m not always sure is impartial to my rudeness.

I feel in extremes that I cannot explain. I can no longer express myself or communicate in an efficient manner and every time I have to speak to somebody new it takes me back to the days when I did have a way with words and the scariest thing I had to do was public speak in front of a school of 500. One person to me is now 500.

I used to have a handle on life when and I used to have a way with words.

Yours faithfully

Lindiwe Dhlakama