The very best words

I've had nothing and everything to say.  In the movies when the aliens or the mermaids or angels arrive and meet human beings they often can't speak.  They don't know the language spoken where they've arrived on earth so they communicate with emotions, with touch, long gazes, and love. 

I haven't known how to write or speak this feeling in which I have been wading.  My vision blurry, I feel my way towards my allies and steel myself for our survival.  I don't want to use too much energy so that I don't spend my reserves.  It must look like depression or anxiety.  It must look like panic.  It feels noisy and chaotic and wordy though I've not spoken much at all.  I've shared on social media, I've advocated for the rights of everyone, and I wear my heart so open and unbuttoned that is screams out, you can see its beating outline on my chest.  I'm no mermaid, no angel, sometimes alien, but I don't know the words to speak here. 

I see messages from friend to other friends who don't believe this mess involves them.  White women who text other white women in the hopes that they have the same disdain for the disruption of their regularly scheduled privileged lives, only to find that the receiver of the message is active and hurt and organizing, and I am speechless.  It figures, I've thought.  And then gratitude washes over me for the friend who did respond in kind.  I read posts from people in my life from way back, way, way back, who say, "Stephanie, it's only been a week.  Give him a chance."  And I remember giving the bullies in my high school whose torment of me crushed moment to moment and being advised to either ignore them or ask them, sincerely ask them, why they've chosen me.  And I am stunned.

Sometimes people listen, really sit with you and listen, hold you in a space that they've generously given.  Sometimes when you aren't even there they are praying for you, hoping for you, holding you dear, sending you strength.  Sometimes, when you can hardly speak, they read between the lines and hear you.  Sometimes the very best words are expressed, barely spoken.


I have before felt lonely, afraid, ashamed.  I have before felt disconnected, excluded, outside.  This was something else.  In my spirit's journey for meaning, I'd assumed that deep down everyone was on a similar path, only to hear/see/read the most violent, hateful, racist, sexist, misogynistic, uninformed, terrified and terrifying rhetoric spewing like bile about almost everything and everyone I love and hold dear.  I have felt that all-consuming fear that makes people do the craziest things.  I have watched in shock, horror, and disbelief at what my black people would call the devil, take his place on a thrown right next to the people's god.  They look at the throne and can't tell the difference.  Angels, devils, mermaids, and aliens. 

I was sitting on a bench outside the bank on the corner of an intersection in my town.  I'd walked there to get out of the house where my husband was on day two and a half of man-flu and because I needed to take some fresh air into my lungs.  It was 33 degrees and windy.  It was perfect and it was quiet.  I talked to myself and to my angels.  These existential dialogues have been occurring with greater frequency, as soon as I've a free moment from the needs, desires, and demands of everything in the world.  It sounds like hysteria or panic, which it truly is not, but a real consideration of purpose, mine and everyone's, that I've not really had with this much intensity in my life.  This moment in history feels fraught. 

The wind hit my face and my hands as I tried to type on my phone to a friend.  It was so cold that I thought to just put the phone down for a while so I could just stop the sizzling in my brain that happens when I'm plugged in.  I put the phone in my pocket and turned my face to the sun trying to work her magic on that cold day.  When I opened my eyes, I made contact for a fleeting moment with a new friend, a woman I knew just briefly through shared friends and in our attendance at school functions, who was passing with a friend at just the moment I'd opened my eyes.  She doubled back and said, "Can I just give you a hug?  I want to hug you." 

I said, "Oh, yes.  Yes, please."  And we stood on the corner of at the crazy intersection in our little town and held each other.  When we let go I thanked her and we both wished each other a good day.  She walked on and I sat back on my bench and took in the air deeply, tears immediately coming.  Oh, my heart. 

Nothing and everything to say.  SHE had the very best words.

(c) Copyrighted 2017.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Drawing, work in progress.  Grace, 2017.  Stephanie Penn-Virot