The power of the voice

There is power in giving voice to your concerns. For so long I have kept my feelings for women and confusion over my sexual identity to myself. I had decided to bury my feelings and I prayed that they would never surface (clearly that did not work). Even in the past months I sat and worried, stressed over thought and just made myself miserable over the question of my own sexuality. I thought that if I said it out loud, if I said that I want to be with women out loud, it would make it real. I fought so long trying to suppress my feelings; in the process I suppressed me. When I decided to start this blog I felt better I was able to get it out of my head and written down for others to read and know, but I still had not said it. When I talked to my best friend the first time we only got to talk very briefly and I was a ball of nerves. After talking to her briefly I already began to feel better, I had gotten it out, but I still hadn't given adequate voice to my sexuality. I had not let the words linger out in the air; I kept them locked up in solitary confinement. So yesterday my best friend and I finally got to have one of our typical 2 hour conversations, and I said it. I told her about my feelings as a child, I told her about my fear of how my life would change. I told her exactly how I feel and have felt. As the great best friend she is she listened, she encouraged me, she actually told me she likes me as a lesbian lol. I felt support, I just talked and talked and talked, and the more I talked the more comfortable I felt within my own skin. I was reminded of this amazing quote from Audre Lorde's daughter in her essay on the transformation of silence in language and action, she says

"Tell them about how you're never really whole person if you remain silent, because there is always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside."

I think that's so true, there is something to be said to actually using your vocal cords and saying out loud the thoughts that you have held deep within in you, instantly there is a release of pressure that has been weighing you down, you can begin to experience life without that nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach. I have spent so much of my life keeping my thoughts and feelings buried deep within my soul and praying that they would never see the light of day, but now I have come to realize that I have to say them, I need to let them be free. Does this mean that I'm going to go around telling all of my personal thoughts and feelings to every person I see? No, but I will speak them at least to my best friend, because the great feeling that I felt last night in just verbalizing my innermost thoughts was one of the most liberating experiences I have ever had in my life.