There is a wealth of things I would like to say, but I get lost in how to say them. My fear of being misunderstood or hurting people’s feelings or seeming ignorant means that I silence myself constantly.
I want to live by my values. Does that mean I boldly speak my mind, feelings be damned? Or that I bite my tongue out of respect for damaged feelings?
The wise among us would advise that there’s a middle ground and I would listen, nod my head, marvel at their wisdom. Yet I find there are things that cannot be said. Can they be set to one side? Or must they be carried on in silence?
I lay in bed at 2 am in a strange city, typing with my eyes closed to shut out the world. What a skill. A town of misfits where it’s more natural to talk about Henry VIII watching the monastery burn and a network of secret tunnels they don’t want us knowing about than it is the rugby match at 2. The island’s gone, but the misfit toys remain.
I hold my words like a carton of eggs bundled in my arm as I head for the checkout.
But here I am, on the other side of the worst days of my life precisely because I accepted that some words must be said. Some eggs must be hurled through the dark at the kitchen window.
Some. But not these, not now.
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4 responses to “The middle ground”
Yes to all of this. I feel this so frequently, and find that the “middle ground” I have often inhabited feels like silent no man’s land (yes the shells are still bombarding).
And questions remain: which eggs should be shied at the windows? Which shall become soufflé? Which will daily sustain me, though they are used in ordinary ways?
And yes, to all of this. Constant questions for me. I like the way you put it — which for the windows, which for the souffle? (Though there’s some breaking and beating in both instances.) Well put.
The middle ground is easier the closer you are to it naturally…
I can find some middle ground with those whose politics is in the middle, but finding it with right wingers is difficult, with the hard right and fascists, impossible. And then, feelings be damned!
So my problem with the middle ground is that I’m a socialist? Haha. Joking aside, you make a fair point. The world has such a dehumanizing tilt that I sometimes think I have a harder time with the patronizing nature of the “reasonable middle” that’s got an answer for everything (in theory). In reality, I find there’s a lot of fear concealed in these sort of neat answers — a fear of rocking the boat, a tacit acknowledgement that the status quo is unreasonable, but a fear that things can only be worse rather than daring to imagine that they might be better.