Silence was a game of pretend.

“Things I have been silent about,” by Azar Nafisi.

 

Don’t you love that title?  This is a book on CD that I have been listening to.

 

She began keeping a journal on things she was keeping silent about.

 

There seems to be a space in all of us, a dark space, a cavern where we put all the things we are too afraid to talk about.   We are silent for many reasons, silent but knowing.

 

 “Airing our dirty laundry” isn’t it odd that we teach our children there are unmentionables! 

 

What are the unmentionables?  Aren’t we then presenting an off balance world, paying attention only to the mentionables!

 

As a child my world was way of kilter, so far off to one side that I myself grew up off balanced. 

 

Imagine instead if I had the whole picture, if all spoke of how my father molests little girls?   I guess in hindsight they did, but they spoke in whispers about it, it was a secret. 

 

My mother’s silence was the deadliest.

 

In their silence, I felt that I had the wrong impression of my father, for the rest seemed to treat him as though he was normal. Yet I could never do the same, ever.

 

My world finally made sense when I heard that there was a reason my body feared him.  I understood my imbalance.

 

My secret was that my body feared him even if my mind held no pictures or words to go along with it, I was terrified to be left alone with my father even as an adult.  In my silence I never told any one.

 

My fear was totally irrational it seemed, for as I looked around at the rest of my family, No one but me seemed to feel that way.

 

What I was left with then was, ‘there must be something wrong with me!’

 

You then walk around off balance inside and it seems you can never make the correction alone.  There wasn’t anything it seemed I could do to make me not afraid.

 

I was left being a bad daughter.

 

The silence in our home about all of this didn’t make it balanced.  The silence didn’t preserve a normal family or keep an untarnished image, no instead it kept dysfunction alive and growing like a malignant tumor spreading unchecked.

 

My mother and father may have had a cave full of things that they too didn’t talk about, but that I can’t know.

 

All I do know is that just because we didn’t talk about it, it didn’t make it go away.

 

You can tuck and bury it under piles stuff and pretty words, good intentions, forgiveness of sins, doing good deeds, but underneath all of that it remains unchanged.

 

No matter how silent we were nothing changed the facts.

A bell was rung and we all pretend in our silences to not have heard it.

 

Silence, the word itself has two drastically different sides.

One is to sit with the absence of noise, alone in an oasis of peace, the other refusing to acknowledge or express something that you know.

 

As I sit here today four and a half years after breaking my silence, I know that the silence did as much or more damage as the rape itself.

 

My little childhood friend who was raped with me, she too kept silent, I am not sure why?  Two hurt little girls walking forward in silence.

 

Going back and trying to understand it even now as an adult is unimaginable, harder yet being so little, what could we say and to whom?  Did we try and air our dirty laundry?

 

What made us remain silent and does it matter why?

Aren’t there always ‘good reasons’ to remain silent?

 

Fear I would have to say is right up near the top.

Fear is the key that locks the door of silence. 

 

It is odd as I write that, that not only did I fear my father, but I was fearful of talking about it.

 

All my fears were realized when I did break my silence, the worst happened.  Darkness did descend upon my family, the clouds came in and eclipsed the sunshine my mother tried to build, down went the façade and tarnish found its way into everything.  All the pretend normal disappeared.

 

Silence was a game of pretend!